"I worked really hard to be mediocre. But I studied. When I lay my head on my pillow, I’m very satisfied, not so much with my record or my numbers, but I know I gave it everything I had every day." -- Dave Eiland

Who is the only player in major league history to give up a home run to the first batter he faced, and to hit a home run against the first pitcher he faced? It's not Babe Ruth, it's not Shohei Ohtani, it's not even Roy Hobbs. It's Dave Eiland!
David William Eiland was born July 5, 1966, in Dade City, Florida. He was an all-conference football and baseball at Zephyrhills High School and then attended the University of Florida on a scholarship to play baseball and football, but an injury his freshman year ended his NFL dreams and he focused on baseball. He then transferred to the University of South Florida, where he was an All-Sun Belt Conference player and a preseason All-American in 1987. He also played for the Falmouth Commodores of the Cape Cod Baseball League.
The Yankees drafted Eiland in the 7th round, #185 overall, of the 1987 draft. He rose quickly through the Yankee system, jumping from Low-A to A-ball in his debut season of 1987; he went a combined 9-3 with a 1.87 ERA and 0.960 WHIP in 91.2 innings.
The following year he started in Double-A, where he was an Eastern League All-Star after going 9-5 with a 2.56 ERA and 0.980 WHIP in 119.1 innings, and was promoted to Triple-A Columbus, where he made just one start before getting the call: The soon-to-be 37-year-old Ron Guidry pulled his hamstring and was going on the Disabled List. Eiland was called up to take his place in the rotation.
Eiland's debut on August 3, 1988, was against the Brewers in Milwaukee, and the first batter he faced was future Hall of Famer Paul Molitor. The third baseman welcomed the 22-year-old rookie to the Show by cranking a 1-2 slider to deep left-center for a home run.

"It was the first batter. It only counts for one run." -- Dave Eiland

Eiland settled down after that, allowing just two more hits and two walks in seven innings. But then Eiland's leg started cramping up -- in the sixth, manager Lou Piniella and trainer Gene Monahan went to the mound to check on him -- and he was pulled after the seventh inning. Closer Dave Righetti came in to get the final six outs in a game the Yankees were winning 5-1, and he was bombed for five runs on five hits while retiring just one batter, and the Yankees lost, 6-5.
Eiland made two more starts that year, but he lasted a total of just 5.2 innings while surrendering eight runs on 12 hits, two walks, and two hit batters. The big problem, as demonstrated by the very first batter he faced in the majors, was the long ball -- Eiland gave up five in those 5.2 innings!
The Yankees sent Eiland back down to Columbus after his start on August 17, and he spent the rest of the season down there. The following year he started in Triple-A again. The Yankees called him up in June and again he looked pretty good in his first start, holding the Texas Rangers to three runs over seven innings and getting his first major league win. But over the rest of the season he went 0-3 in five starts, with a 6.26 ERA and 1.683 WHIP in 27.1 innings (and giving up five home runs). Once again he rode the "Columbus Shuttle" and he spent the rest of the season in the minors, and began the 1990 season down there as well.
Eiland -- still just 23 years old -- dominated in Columbus that season, going 16-5 with a 2.87 ERA and 1.067 WHIP. He was named the International League Pitcher of the Year, and the Yankees made him a September call-up. He finally looked good enough in pinstripes -- 2-1, 3.56 ERA, 1.187 WHIP in 30.1 innings -- that he looked like he'd stick the next season.
He opened 1991 in the rotation, joining previously forgotten Yankee Tim Leary, Scott Sanderson, Chuck Cary, and Andy Hawkins... yikes. It was not a fun time to be a Yankee fan.
Eiland went 1-3 with a 4.75 ERA in nine starts before hurting his heel in May and going on the Disabled List. He came back in August, got two more starts -- giving up 11 runs in 8.2 innings -- and was put in the bullpen. (Eiland later said he came back before he'd fully recovered because he wanted to help the team.) He was given two starts at the end of the year, and looked pretty good -- in 12.0 innings, he gave up just three runs on nine hits and a walk.
But that winter, the Yankees made a series of roster moves, signing free agents Danny Tartabull and previously forgotten Yankees Mike Gallego and Mike Stanley; trading Steve Sax to the White Sox for Melido Perez, previously forgotten Yankee Bob Wickman, and Domingo Jean; and acquiring Charlie Hayes from the Phillies for Darrin Chapin. They needed to clear a spot on the 40-man roster. Eiland was designated for assignment, and he didn't like it.

"As far as I'm concerned, it was a stupid move on the part of the Yankees and I'm looking forward to leaving. I've done a lot more for them than some of the people they have kept. I guess I didn't fit into their plans. It doesn't make sense." -- Dave Eiland

He was promptly signed by the Padres, who put him at the end of their rotation for the upcoming 1992 season.
Eiland started the fifth game of the year against the Los Angeles Dodgers in San Diego. He allowed an RBI double to future Yankee Darryl Strawberry in the 1st inning, but future Yankee Gary Sheffield tied it up with an RBI triple in the bottom of the 1st. Eiland retired the side in order in the top of the 2nd.
In the bottom of the 2nd, a walk followed by two outs brought up Eiland with a man on second base. He was facing yet another future Yankee, Bob Ojeda, and drilled a 2-2 pitch to left-center for a two-run home run!
As Eiland had been in the American League his first four seasons -- no interleague play then -- he'd never come up as a batter before. And so he became the first player to allow a home run to the first batter he faced, and to hit a home run against the first pitcher he faced. It would be the only home run of his career.

"It was a fluke. I wish people would talk about my pitching instead of my hitting." -- Dave Eiland

Eiland pitched two seasons in San Diego, going 0-5 with a 5.38 ERA in 16 starts and one relief appearance. They released him the following May, and he signed with the Cleveland Indians. They sent him to Triple-A, where he made eight starts with the Charlotte Knights (1-3, 5.30 ERA) before being traded to the Texas Rangers, who kept him in Triple-A for the rest of the season (3-1, 4.54 ERA). A free agent after the season, he signed with the Yankees during spring training in 1994 and spent the next two seasons back in Columbus, going 9-6 with a 3.58 ERA in 1994 and 8-7 with a 3.14 ERA in 1995. The Yankees called him up on July 21 and he made one start and three relief appearances, going 1-1 with a 6.30 ERA in 10.0 innings.
He signed a minor league deal with the Cardinals for the 1996 season and pitched in eight games, going 0-1 with a 5.55 ERA in 24.1 innings, before getting released in June. Three days later he returned to the Yankees for a third stint, going 8-4 with a 2.92 ERA in Columbus in 15 starts. He was a September call-up for that magical 1996 season, but never got into a game.
Returning to the Yankees on a minor-league deal in 1997, the 30-year-old Eiland battled tendinitis and went 5-3 with a 6.42 ERA in 81.1 innings across three levels.
Eiland spent the next three years of his major league career in the Tampa Bay Devil Rays organization, splitting his time between the majors and minors as a swingman. He went 6-12 with a 6.54 ERA and 1.663 WHIP in 137.2 innings with the Devil Rays.
After the 2000 season, Eiland signed a minor league deal with the Oakland A's, but he tore his elbow and missed the entire season after getting Tommy John surgery. An attempted comeback in 2002 was ended when he retore the same ligament 51 weeks later. In those days, a second Tommy John surgery was thought to be a death sentence for a pitcher's elbow. Rather than attempting another comeback, he retired to become a pitching coach.
In interviews, Eiland -- with a career 12-27 record, with a 5.74 ERA and 1.563 WHIP -- said his major league struggles forced him to be a student of the game, and that would serve him well as a pitching coach.

“I didn’t have the God-given ability to get over the hump, so to speak. I kept getting chances because I did my work and I think that helps me in the coaching aspect. I work with guys now who have ability. I can teach them how to work, how to study film, how to read swings, how to attack guys.” -- Dave Eiland

He was a minor league pitching coach at various levels with the Yankees from 2003 to 2007, and was credited with helping the minor league development of the Yankees' trio of promising pitching prospects -- Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, and Ian Kennedy.
After Joe Girardi replaced Joe Torre as Yankee manager in 2008, Eiland was named the team's pitching coach, a position he held for three seasons. He earned a ring as the pitching coach of the 2009 World Series champions.
Eiland's contract was not renewed after the 2010 season, with Brian Cashman giving the cryptic explanation: "He knows why. He was given conditions that needed to be followed. So he knows why." In June of that season, Eiland had taken a three-week leave of absence from the Yankees which was never explained beyond it being a family issue.
After the Yankees, Eiland worked in the Tampa Bay Rays' front office and then was a pitching coach for the Royals from 2012 to 2017 (winning a second World Series ring as a coach in 2015). He served as Mets pitching coach in 2018 and 2019, and Jacob deGrom, Zack Wheeler, and Steven Matz credited their improvement as pitchers to his guidance. In 2020 he managed the Eastern Reyes del Tigre in the independent Constellation Energy League. In 2021 he was a pitching coach in the independent Atlantic League, and in 2022 and 2023, a pitching coach for the Miami Marlins' Double-A team.
Eiland is now Head of Baseball for Grand Central Sports Management.
Eiland Living

• Dave Eiland's last name is pronounced EYE-land, and his Chris Berman nickname is Dave "No Man Is An" Eiland. It's from a 1624 poem by John Donne: "No man is an island, entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."
  
• Eiland was an extra in the 1999 movie For Love of the Game and was the "pitching double" for Kevin Costner. "Any time you saw the ball cross the plate, I probably threw that pitch," Eiland said in a February interview with breakingbatspod. "Even though he says he threw every pitch in that movie, I can tell ya, no he didn't." Eiland also was used as Costner's "body double" in long shots to feature an authentic MLB delivery. Eiland's IMDB page lists his role as "relief pitcher" -- he's the pitcher the Tigers manager briefly considers sending out to pitch the 9th inning.
  
• According to The Baseball Filmography by Hal Erickson, the Yankees and Tigers -- the two teams featured prominently in For Love of the Game -- required anyone in a uniform had to either be a professional actor (like Costner) or a former or active baseball player. In other words, no off-the-street extras in the dugout. As a result, several players were in the background, including Yankees Eiland, Donzell McDonald, Scott Pose, Mike Buddie, and previously forgotten Yankee Ricky Ledee.
  
• Dave's father, Bill Eiland, was chief of police in Zephyrhills from 1961 to 1996. Eiland Boulevard in Zephyrhills is named in Bill Eiland's honor.
  
• The 6'3" Eiland was a wide receiver and punter in high school, and Florida envisioned him as a tight end. But he bulked up so much that summer in the weight room that the Gators were going to switch him to fullback. A shoulder injury ended his collegiate football career before it ever began, however.
  
• The 1987 draft was a particularly bad one for the Yankees. We didn't have a 1st or 2nd round pick, and the next four players drafted -- Bill Dacosta, Doug Gogolewski, Red Morrison, and Pop Popplewell -- never made it out of the minors. And so Eiland, our 7th round pick, was the first player drafted by the Yankees in 1987 to reach the Show. In fact, of the 54 players drafted by the Yankees that year, only one other made it to the majors with the Yankees: Gerald "Ice" Williams, taken in the 14th round, 367th overall. Three others were drafted by the Yankees, but reached the majors with other organizations: Terry Bradshaw (17th round, 445th overall) -- no, not that one -- a high school player who didn't sign after the Yankees drafted him, instead going to Norfolk State University and getting drafted three years later by the Cardinals, and making his debut with them in 1995; James Mouton (42nd round, 1,057th overall), another high school player who didn't sign and went to Saint Mary's College of California, got drafted in 1991 by the Houston Astros, and made his debut with them in 1994; and Brad Ausmus (48th round, 1,152nd overall), who was taken by the Colorado Rockies in the 1992 expansion draft but traded to the Padres the following season, and he made his debut with them in 1993. The other 49 players drafted by the Yankees that year never reached the majors at all.
  
• If you get a time machine, tell the Yankees to use one of those wasted 1987 picks to take 1990s five-category roto god Reggie Sanders, taken by the Reds with the #180 pick. You might be tempted to tell them to take the high school pitcher the Orioles found in the 11th round (#273 overall), but Mike Mussina isn't going to sign -- he's going to Stanford University. The Orioles drafted him again three years later, this time in the 1st round.
  
• Eiland said early in his career he was a two-pitch pitcher, relying on his fastball and slider, but later learned to use a changeup and curveball to tantalize batters with pitches that sometimes didn't break 70 mph.
  
• Eiland wore four numbers with the Yankees: #52, #28, #58, and #47. With the Padres, he wore #45; with Tampa Bay, #48.
  
• No one has worn #52 since C.C. Sabathia, who had it from 2009 to 2019. Prior to him, players who wore it more than one season include Jose Contreras (2003-2004), David Weathers (1996-1997), Mark Hutton (1994-1996), Doyle Alexander (1976, 1982-1983); Mike Griffin (1979-1981); and Joe Verbanic (1967-1970).
  
• #28, which Eiland wore from 1989 to 1991, is currently worn by Austin Wells; prior to that, it was worn by Josh Donaldson (2022-2023) and Corey Kluber (2021). Others who wore it three or more seasons: Melky Cabrera (2006-2008), Chad Curtis (1997-1999), Scott Kamieniecki (1993-1996), Bob Watson (1980-1982), Sparky Lyle (1972-1978), Bud Daley (1961-1964), Art Ditmar (1957-1961), Tom Morgan (1951-1956), Tommy Byrne (1946-1951), Atley Donald (1938-1945), and previously forgotten Yankee Myril Hoag (1931-1936).
  
• Eiland wore #58 in 1990, which was worn from 2021 to 2023 by Wandy Peralta. Other long-time wearers of #58 were Jeff Karstens (2006-2007), Colter Bean (2005-2006), Randy Choate (2000-2001), Juan Espino (1982-1986), and previously forgotten Yankee Dooley Womack (1966-1968).
  
• And finally, Eiland wore #47 during his second stint with the Yankees in 1995. It's currently worn by Victor Gonzalez, and the two seasons before that by Frankie Montas. Others who wore it at least three seasons: Jordan Montgomery (2017-2022), Ivan Nova (2010-2016), Darrell Rasner (2006-2008), Shane Spencer (1998-2002), Fred Beene (1972-1974), Luis Arroyo (1960-1963), and previously forgotten Yankee Tom Sturdivant (1955-1959).
  
• When he was named Yankees pitching coach in 2008, Eiland was coaching ex-teammates including pitchers Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera, as well as catcher Jorge Posada. That helped establish a certain level of trust, Eiland said, "but it’s not like they’re going to stand around and say, 'Remember when we all played together?'"
  
• Eiland told Baseball America in 2019 that what made Mariano so good was he was always trying to improve. "He would always ask me, 'What did you see, was it good?' He always wanted information. He was humble. He never thought he had it all figured out and was always positive."
  
• Eiland said long-time Yankee pitching guru Billy Connors was a big influence on him. The advice he most took to heart: "Keep it simple." In a 2021 article in the New York Post, Eiland said he gave that advice to Jacob deGrom, helping him improve from a good pitcher (45-32, .584 W%, 2.98 ERA, 1.122 WHIP before Eiland was hired prior to the 2018 season) to a great one (39-25, .609 W%, 2.08 ERA, 0.863 WHIP after).
  
• On September 8, 2008, the Yankees lost 12-1 to the Los Angeles Angels, with a bench-clearing brawl in the sixth inning. The brouhaha started when L.A.'s Torii Hunter shoved Yankee catcher Ivan Rodriguez -- remember he was a Yankee? -- after a play at the plate. Pudge then threw a punch at Hunter and the benches cleared. Eiland was in the middle of the fracas and appeared to get hit in the face. After the game, the 42-year-old pitching coach passed out in the dugout and the Yankee players helped carry him to the clubhouse, where he was examined by a doctor. "He's been fighting a cold and he worked out hard this morning," manager Joe Girardi said. "I think the last time he ate was 1 o'clock. He took some medicine during the game and got lightheaded and dizzy and passed out. But he's OK now. I just told him to eat."
  
• In 1999, the Tampa Bay Times reported Eiland was the Columbus Clippers all-time leader in wins (67), innings (767), and strikeouts (437). Overall, in 13 seasons in Triple-A, he was 89-49 with a 3.61 ERA and 1.211 WHIP. In 2012, he was inducted into the International League Hall of Fame.
  
• Eiland's wife is Sandra and they have two daughters, Nicole and Natalie.
  

"It's about perseverance. Hard work pays off. Maybe not right away, maybe not overnight. But eventually, it does." -- Dave Eiland

Ten seasons in the Show means a lot to ballplayers. Ten seasons means you're fully vested in the pension plan. It also means you are eligible to appear on the Hall of Fame ballot (though the Baseball Writers' Association of America doesn't have to put you on the ballot, and they didn't put Eiland on it). Dave Eiland, a pitcher who described himself as someone who "worked really hard to be mediocre," worked hard enough to last 10 seasons in the majors, and that's pretty impressive.
He's also the answer to a cool trivia question and was in a pretty good baseball movie.
Definitely a Yankee worth remembering!

Shannen Doherty is a guest. She had also just had Tori Spelling on her own podcast, here:
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https://new.reddit.com/BeverlyHills90210/comments/1d07a2z/lets_be_clear_with_shannen_doherty_lets_go_back/
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• Doherty and Spelling just got back from the Steel City Con. It was Doherty’s birthday that weekend. Doherty’s friend flew Doherty and Spelling there on his plane. Doherty has her own pillow on the plane. Her friend Chris flies the plane.
• Doherty was only scheduled to show up on Saturday and Sunday. Some fans were upset that she didn’t show up on Friday. Doherty said at the panel that she was only supposed to show up on Saturday, to clarify to the fans.
• Some agent’s wife wrote things about Doherty, that he didn’t really know about. Doherty thought those type of people had been rooted out. But that maybe there’s more that she needs to haul out of there (and she makes a shotgun cocking noise).
• When Spelling listens to old interviews, she can’t believe the voice she had. She laments at how she was coached to act nice, and didn’t stand up for herself. She has now found her voice.
• They think Priestley’s voice is different now, as well as Brian Austin Green’s. Spelling is jealous that Green can go through puberty on the show, and can come out better. They think Ziering, Garth, and Carteris’ voices sound the same.
• Spelling learned recently that Doherty and Brian Austin Green tried to date, when she was doing Charmed. They tried to kiss and it was awkward, so it didn’t last.
• Spelling had a female parrot, Charlie Bird. She had found the bird in Lahaina and took it home on the plane with her. One day, when Spelling wasn’t there, her bad boyfriend had been blowing smoke onto the bird. When Spelling walked in to her place, she said hi to the bird and went for her normal kiss with the bird. Charlie bit her nose and split it open. There was blood everywhere. She called her boyfriend to take her to the hospital, but he couldn’t, because he was playing a poker game.
• She had to call her parents to take her to the hospital. Her parents wondered why her live in boyfriend couldn’t take her.
• Her parents made her get rid of the bird. She gave it to makeup artist (who did makeup on Beverly Hills, 90210) Nicky Schillace. He had a farm.
• Doherty recalls how this is the like the story parents tell young children about a pet needing more space and going to a farm, except it’s for real.
• Birds live 80+ years and are smart.
• When Spelling was in Maui with Doherty and Doherty’s boyfriend, her fiance proposed by the waterfall. He then did something horrible. He then hung out with the guys the next day. Doherty was so mad, that she took his credit card from the room, went to a boutique, and bought this 12” glass dolphin, for $3,500. The boyfriend came back early. Doherty went to her room to talk to the boyfriend in their room. Something happened and Doherty smashed that dolphin.
• That was the same trip where Spelling came back with Charlie Bird.
• Doherty has always regretted her marriage engagements except for one or two. She said yes because she didn’t want to say no. But has always known that for those other ones, she’d break up soon.
• Doherty says when someone keeps telling you you’re a has-been, washed up, ugly, you start to believe it. And have no confidence. And think that if she left them, who else would want to be with her? She would start to believe it.
• Spelling says both her and Doherty would hang on to their boyfriends for too long.
• Doherty’s mom says “a tiger doesn’t change their stripes”. Doherty wishes she had listened.
• Spelling says all of her boyfriends, except her first husband, has cheated on her. Spelling thinks she learned to accept cheating.
• Doherty has always had a hard line about cheating. She thinks she learned to accept less, though.
• Doherty’s ex Rob Weiss was cool. She also adores her 2nd husband, Rick. Everyone else thinks she should have a problem with him. Rick has now been 15 years sober. He had a heart of gold, and was never abusive. He was just into drugs. Doherty says Rick has changed a lot from when she was married to Rick.
• Doherty: People can change, but not to the degree you want them to.
• Spelling says she’s a cheater too, because that’s how she and Dean met. Doherty says Spelling isn’t a cheater now though, since she didn’t cheat during the 18 years she was married to Dean though.
• Spelling lost her virginity to someone named Ryan. Doherty had worn a Betsy Johnson black floral dress in a cast photo. That was the same dress Spelling had lost her virginity in. Doherty had wanted to borrow that dress. Spelling told her there’s a bloodstain in the back. Doherty still borrowed it. She said she didn’t give a fuck. The dress had red roses. Spelling had gotten it cleaned, but the blood stain wasn’t fully removed. The stain looked like it was part of the rose on the dress.
• Doherty said she loved that dress, that she got one just like it, but in all black.
• Spelling cheated on Ryan with Brian Austin Green. Ryan had been great. When Ryan found out, they broke up.
• After cheating, Spelling would then break up with Brian Austin Green, but not immediately. Green was the first love of her life.
• Doherty says that was teenage infatuation.
• Spelling still gets hot and riled up near Green, even though Green is engaged now.
• Doherty says they all hung out so much, that Spelling couldn’t help but be infatuation with Green.
• Spelling had to go to Doherty’s house to hook up with Green, because she couldn’t do it at her manor.
• Doherty says maybe people can change from when they’re 18 - 21 years old, because those people are learning what’s right and wrong. They’re also caught up in hormones. Doherty says Spelling is not a serial cheater just because she cheated during that age range. Serial cheaters are those that cheat in every relationship. Doherty says people aren’t fully developed in that age range, to know that they should break up before they cheat.
• Spelling tells Doherty that Donna Martin and David SIlver got married at the end of the show. While filming the wedding episode, they were a linked force. By the 10th season, they still had the passion for the show and were willing to step up. They were producers at heart, and bonded over that. They came together as their actual personal selves, not just as characters.
• Spelling says when they did BH90210, Green thought Spelling and himself were just friends, during the early years of Beverly Hills, 90210. Even though she was infatuated with him.
• Doherty says that’s not true, Green knew how Spelling felt about him.
• Doherty thinks Green was in a difficult position, because he was with a producer’s daughter, and working together.
• When filming the wedding episode, Green and Spelling wrote their own vows to each other. They rewrote the scripted vows. During rehearsal, they read the scripted vows. On camera, they wrote their rewritten vows.
• Spelling told Jennie Garth that she thinks she’s in love with Green again, after that wedding episode. Garth said not to go down that road again.
• Recently, Spelling was talking to Green. Green has been supportive of Spelling, and given her inspiring words. Spelling then said to Green, “no one’s broken my heart since you”. There was then a pause, pause, etc. This is the first time she’s said this since 30 years.

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• She then said just kidding. They smiled and went back to talking.
• Doherty says all of their boyfriends have had red flags. But that they themselves had their own red flags. Because of their jobs. Because they didn’t have normal social dynamics with people. Because of the bad press.
• The press hurt bad.
• Doherty says she both had trauma, and an ego.
• Spelling isn’t sure what she wants right now.
• Spelling says it’s difficult to be with a man, and not have the man feel emasculated. Because of all of the wealth and fame the women like herself have.
• Doherty says some men have their own status too. There are men with strong worth ethics, that have achieved success, and have their own professional status.
• It is hard to be with a woman that can get her own reservation anywhere. But, there are men that would take pride in being with such women.
• Doherty says to not look for men that a women can dominate, or for a man that will put a woman down. But a man that will be proud to be with the woman.
• Spelling says it’s hard to find such men. She’s afraid she can’t find such men.
• Doherty says “do you think Keith Urban is emasculated by Nicole Kidman”? He’s a massive country star. She’s one of the most talented actresses of our time. They compliment each other, and feel that they’re equals.
• Spelling has been separated for almost a year. She recently filed for divorce.
• Spelling says it’s ingrained in men’s soles to be providers. Men think they are worthless if they’re not providers.
• Spelling wonders how a man can deal with a woman that’s surrounded by paparazzi.
• Doherty says well maybe she feels a man can be limited by having a 9-5 job. She wants to do stuff in the middle of the afternoon, and feels limited by their career. But if she cares about them, she will adjust and make it work.
• Doherty has been set up recently. She said no at first because she wasn’t ready.
• Then she said no because it was a blind date. She says the guy has to know coming in that she has cancer. The guy has to know coming in that she’s on a time clock.
• Spelling says she proactively makes herself small and tries to sabotage herself.
• Doherty says not to put that thought in mens’ brains. Don’t ever make yourself small for anyone. She’s been telling Spelling that for 30 years. Spelling needs a new list of dos and don’ts.
• Doherty loves waking up next to her dog. Her dog doesn’t kick her or take the covers. The most the dog does is make a circle, and lay back down.
• Spelling hates when she wakes up and men are wrapped around a woman. She was conditioned to believe that that meant he likes her. She would be laying there for hours. She hate sleeping with someone.
• Doherty can’t stand cuddling. She gets hot at night. She always needs A/C and fans. She doesn’t want to be wrapped around like an octopus.
• There’s a certain amount of time for cuddling, then go to your side of the bed.
• Spelling and Doherty say men should listen to their podcasts before dating them.
• Spelling says she’s never really “alone”.
• Spelling thinks she is not good enough if she’s not adored by a man, or doesn’t have his attention. It’s ingrained in her. But she hates that thinking now.
• Doherty says it’s good to be adored by your friends. That’s more important than a partner. There’s no messiness with friends. If they can accept the real you, that’s more important.
• Spelling likes how Doherty’s friend Chris is physically affectionate. He puts her arm around her.
• Doherty says she has some physical affection through that. But for now, sex isn’t the most important thing now. Having a best friend is so much more important.
• Doherty has affection from her exes. She can call them any time of the night, without dating them. She gets what she needs from the most important people from her life, so she doesn’t need it from outside sources.
• Doherty says she grew up in a time when the men were paid the most, they were the quarterbacks, they could do no wrong. No one would listen to women, they were called a bitch. She asked why they made Brenda a dramatic angsty girl. That’s what spawned the I Hate Brenda newsletter.
• Spelling does not like the giggle she used to do. What she did then, is not cute for a 50 year old now.
• Doherty says Spelling has always settled for less than she deserved.
• Doherty tells Spelling that giving an opinion is a god given right. Don’t say sorry for it. Someone might not like her opinion, but oh well, it’s your opinion. It’s valid. Don’t say sorry for your opinion.
• Spelling remembers how Doherty was shamed for her opinions, back in the day. That’s what made Spelling try to be nice and cute.
• Doherty says Spelling’s mom was strong.
• Spelling says what Doherty doesn’t know is that she would say sorry to her dad all the time. Her parents never fought, but her dad would give an opinion, and her mom would say sorry. That got ingrained in her. That she doesn’t have a right to speak.
• Her mom was her dad’s biggest champion.
• On the outside, her mom was smart, savvy, strong. But at home, it was different. That was a mixed message.
• Spelling would say sorry to Dean. He asked why she did that. She then told him her mom did that with her dad.
• Doherty said Spelling likes avoiding confrontation. But giving an opinion isn’t confrontation.

Due to technical difficulties, the suggested names of five families' newborns got deleted from Nicole the Namer's computer. Using the criteria given, help her come up with more choices to send to them.

1. The Nicholses - Fern and Sage Nichols are expecting a little boy. Since they are forgoing a middle name, they want a hyphenated name for their son, with one of the names being related to nature, specifically botany.
   
2. Lola Warwick and her boyfriend, Henry Webber, are expecting twin girls. Though she loves the name Jessica, it is already the name of her boyfriend's eldest daughter. She likes popular names from the 1980s and 1990s, while hed prefer names that embrace his Hungarian roots.
   
3. Trevor is extremely picky so he and his wife, Hannah, knew theyd have to go to a naming coach when they found out about their third child. They have an older daughter, Alveoli Jayne Bennett, who goes by Allie and a son named Cisco Daniel Bennett, who goes by Coco. Trevor prefers unconventional names, and Hannah wants to honour her late grandmother, Ruth Katherine Ally.
   
4. Paul and Seth Westwood are adopting for the third time. Their adopted daughter is a 5 year old who has requested to change her current name, Topanga Stephanie, since doesn't fit her and is funny to other kids in her class. The couple have three other children - twins named Oliver Cole and Altway James and a son named Corbin Dean. They want a name with the same vibe as their sons' names but also want to keep their daughter's initials the same as before.
   
5. Tyler and Jenna Collins can't believe their luck. After four daughters, they are finally having their first son. Their daughters are Tessa Antoinette Rae Collins, Violeta Renee Ophelia Collins, Noella Solene Danielle Collins, and Makaila Therese Octavia Collins. Just like their daughters, they want their son to have two middle names. They really like literary and historical names, but also want the name to reflect how blessed they feel to have their son.
   

My responses will be in the comments. Thanks to anyone who decides to play! :)

"I followed the law." - Kristi Noem, possible Trump VP pick, explaining she was just being a "responsible parent, dog owner and neighbor" when she shot her family dog, Cricket.

The Struggle Israel

There are tentative new green shoots of hope for a possible ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

• This time the optimism is coming out of Egypt, which has a track record of brokering deals between the ever-warring parties and could be behind this one too. Negotiators are scrambling to get a deal in place before Israel makes a potentially devastating assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering. Israeli airstrikes killed 22 people in Rafah, including six women and five children, according to Palestinian health officials.
  
• Hope comes and goes with the breeze in this war. But negotiators seem increasingly confident about a deal now because Israel has reduced its demand for the release of hostages from 40 to 33, according to a report in the New York Times. In addition to up to a 40-day ceasefire and forestalling a Rafah invasion, Israel could release thousands of Palestinian prisoners if the deal goes through. Israel would also agree to allow for Palestinians sheltering in the south to move back north to resettle.
  
• As of this writing, the deal has been presented to Hamas, which hasn’t announced whether it would accept, under encouragement from Egypt and others. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Riyadh in multilateral talks with the Brits, Saudis and others on the future of Palestinians’ international status and possible normalization with Israel. The Saudis are talking up the possibility of a breakthrough on that front, and we’ll keep watching.
  

At home, pro-Palestinian campus protests gathered momentum and attention despite efforts at some universities to quell them. Columbia University said it began suspending students after they defied an order to vacate on Monday afternoon. Police arrested more protesters at the University of Texas Austin, where Gov. Greg Abbott has been more than eager to burnish his tough-guy credentials against peaceful demonstrators.

Look No Further Than Crooked Media

Strict Scrutiny just launched their YouTube Channel! So now, hosts Leah Litman, Kate Shaw, and Melissa Murray aren't just for your earholes, your eyeballs can get in on the action too. Make sure to type Strict Scrutiny into your nearest YouTube search bar and tune in for new episodes every Monday!

Under The Radar

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is all the way MAGA. But is she just a cheerleader, or an enforcer?
Congress is back in session this week, and everyone is wondering when, and if, Greene will make good on her promise to try to oust Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) with a “motion to vacate” on the floor. Greene vowed before the Spring recess that the move was coming, as punishment for Johnson capitulating to Dems and passing funding for Ukraine over the objections of an increasingly pro-Russia GOP majority.
Rules that Republicans enacted to rein (remember a guy called) Kevin McCarthy mean Greene can call Johnson on the floor all by herself. Two other Republicans have said they support her. But after Johnson delivered on Ukraine, several Dems also say they’d vote to back Johnson if Greene tries it. That would do something absolutely wild: Make Johnson the speaker of a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and Dems. We throw around “unprecedented” a lot these days, but this would be a true bill. Even Donald Trump hasn’t given Rep. Greene any public encouragement on her quest, suggesting even he recognizes that a razor-thin GOP majority, combined with a vote of no confidence, would make Johnson even more beholden to Democrats for the rest of the year. Doooo it, Marge!

What Else?

Israel is reportedly worried that the International Criminal Court may issue arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials this week for war crimes in Gaza, an Israeli official told NBC News. It’s unclear if warrants could also come for Hamas leaders. The U.S. has reportedly been leaning on the ICC to hold back on fears that the warrants could upend a possible ceasefire deal.
U.S. authorities thwarted an alleged plot from the highest levels of India’s intelligence services to assassinate a leading Sikh dissident on American soil. If that sounds nuts, don’t forget that India was accused of pulling a similar op in Canada earlier this year.
Watch all five GOP candidates for the open House seat in Georgia’s deep-red 3rd district indicate that Donald Trump was the “rightful” winner of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Counterpoint: No, he definitely wasn’t!
The Peach State has gained 13,500 more Dem-registered voters than Republicans since the 2020 election, according to an analysis by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Most of those voters are new residents from out-of-state. And 13,500 may not sound like much, but remember Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes (yup, exactly one less than Trump asked election officials to “find” for him!)
The Supreme Court rejected former Trump advisor and convicted subpoena-dodger Peter Navarro’s second attempt to get his conviction overturned. Navarro is serving a five-month sentence in Miami for two counts of criminal contempt.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) has joined the ranks of Republicans hoping you’ll un-remember their records on abortion since conservatives’ Dobbs decision. Perry now says he’s against a national abortion ban, despite sponsoring one in Congress for seven years! If you’re in Arizona, don’t forget Kari Lake’s double-flip on that state’s abortion ban.
A Minnesota state senator was back on the floor today after getting arrested for first-degree burglary last week. DFL Sen. Nicole Mitchell allegedly broke into her late father’s home to retrieve belongings. She says she startled her stepmother, who she said has memory and paranoia issues.
Trump-orbiter Kimberly Guilfoyle has been posting about her new children’s book, which is all about…wait for it…a princess and her dog. Assuming you’re ok with Guilfoyle entertaining your children, here’s very much hoping this MAGA dog story doesn’t end tragically in a gravel pit.

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Light At The End Of The Email

A federal Appeals Court struck down West Virginia and North Carolina’s laws barring state-funded medical care for transgender persons. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 8-6 that rules barring coverage of gender-affirming care in government-funded insurance in North Carolina and in state-funded Medicaid in West Virginia are both unlawfully discriminatory. The case is likely headed to the Supreme Court.
Paleontologists have uncovered fossils of a short-faced kangaroo that lived 46,000 years ago. No long faces for this ancient kangaroo!

Enjoy

Keith on Twitter: "Dua Lipa stuns as congressional gerrymander"

"They have taken away my constitutional right to speak and that includes speaking to you." - Donald Trump complaining about his gag order, which honestly doesn’t seem to be working

The Struggle Israel

Early Friday morning, Israel struck back at Iran in a continuation of tit-for-tat escalation that has the whole world on edge.

• Explosions were seen and heard over the Iranian city of Isfahan on Friday morning, which Iran’s foreign minister said came from “mini drones” likely fired from inside Iranian territory. The drones were intercepted by Iran’s air defense system. The scale of the attack was limited, and Iran’s response sidestepped belligerence, signaling the success of diplomatic efforts to avert a full-scale war between the two countries—at least for now. A senior Iranian official told Reuters that the country has no plans to retaliate against Israel for the incident, because “the foreign source of the incident has not been confirmed.” Israel gave no public acknowledgement of the incident. Syrian authorities said that Israel had struck a site in Syria for the second time this month on Friday, around the same time as the attack on Iran.
  
• Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he would not comment on the strike apart from saying that the United States is committed to Israel’s security, but was not involved in any offensive operations. The White House also said it had no comment, breaking from a habit of routinely weighing in on the latest developments in the regional conflict. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart on Friday, and a Pentagon readout said that the two discussed issues including “efforts to maintain regional stability,” though it made no specific mention of Iran.
  
• The Biden administration is considering sending more than $1 billion worth of new weapons deals to Israel including military vehicles and mortar rounds, as well as tank ammunition, according to U.S. government officials who spoke to the Wall Street Journal on the condition of anonymity. The deals under consideration would need signoff from congressional leaders and could take months or years to be delivered. But a growing number of U.S. lawmakers oppose giving Israel more American weapons with no strings attached, as the death toll in Gaza has blown past 33,000 according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The State Department and the Pentagon declined to comment on the rumored deal, as did the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Senior adviser at International Crisis Group and former State Department attorney Brian Finucane noted that the United States still “has yet to use the leverage it has with arms transfers to shape Israeli behavior.”
  

The House is set to vote this weekend on a pair of bills that would unlock tens of billions of dollars in military assistance for both Ukraine and Israel.

Look No Further Than Crooked Media

Lovett or Leave It’s April tour dates are just around the corner! Lovett will be at Moontower Comedy Festival in Austin, Texas THIS Sunday on April 21st, with the delightful Joyelle Nicole Johnson, Zach Zucker, The Sklar Brothers and Tim Miller. Also on April 21st in Los Angeles, Pod Save America hosts Tommy Vietor, Dan Pfeiffer, Jon Favreau and Hysteria's Erin Ryan will be LIVE at the Festival of Books. To get tickets & see if Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It are headed to a city near you, go to https://crooked.com/events.

Under The Radar

In states with highly-restrictive abortion laws, emergency rooms have been turning women with serious pregnancy complications or fetal abnormalities away rather than face potential legal liability in post-Roe America, according to a shocking new investigation by the Associated Press. One woman miscarried in the lobby restroom of a Texas emergency room after staff at the front desk refused to admit her. Another woman learned at a Florida hospital that her fetus had no heartbeat the day after she had been turned away by a security guard there. In North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car and the baby later died after an emergency room said it couldn’t offer an ultrasound. Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from emergency rooms spiked after the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned the federal right to an abortion. Federal law requires emergency rooms and hospitals that receive Medicare funding to treat or stabilize patients in active labor or transfer them to a different facility if their own staff is insufficient or incapable of treating them under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday in a lawsuit that could weaken these protections even further. The Biden Administration brought the lawsuit against the state of Idaho, which passed a strict abortion ban with no exceptions to save the life of the pregnant patient. Idaho state Attorney General Raúl Labrador said earlier this year that the state’s abortion ban is “consistent” with EMTLA, which calls for an emergency room to protect an unborn child in medical emergencies, and that the Biden administration is trying to “force doctors to perform abortions.” Obviously, this is bullshit, because the majority of pregnancies that require emergency termination are already not viable. The treatment for severe gestational complications like ectopic pregnancy, a septic uterus, or a miscarriage that won’t release naturally from a patient’s body is all the same: abortion. Failure to terminate a pregnancy when such complications arise is often fatal. These draconian restrictions are not and have never been about “protecting the unborn”—they’re about forcing women to suffer. If the Court weakens EMTLA, even more emergency rooms will turn women away without fear of penalty from the government.

What Else?

Doctors in Arizona are unlikely to perform abortions due to the reinstatement of the 1864 near-total ban on the procedure, despite the fact that the state Attorney General said she would not prosecute doctors.
The jury in the Donald Trump hush money trial in Manhattan is now complete, with 12 jurors and 6 alternates. Opening arguments should kick off Monday.
A man set himself on fire in front of the Manhattan courthouse where Trump’s trial is being held on Friday. The NYPD said that the man, who was rushed to the hospital and remains in critical condition, did not appear to be targeting Trump or others involved in the trial. Just your run-of-the-mill conspiracy theorist, then! Unclear if that’s supposed to make us feel better.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told alt-right nutjob Steve Bannon on his podcast that she doesn’t care “if the Speaker’s office becomes a revolving door,” referencing her efforts to oust current GOP Speaker Mike Johnson. Yeah, girl, we know you don’t care! We can totally tell!
Speaking of which, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) became the third member of the House GOP to sign on to a motion to vacate against Johnson.
Tesla has recalled almost 4,000 of its aesthetically-heinous Cybertrucks because the accelerator pedals are in some cases getting stuck when pressed. It looks terrible! It might accelerate forever! Nothing but upside and innovation from Elon!!!
Warner Bros. Discovery has spent the last few years talking about the importance of cost-cutting, turning some of their movies into tax write-offs, and crying poor during last year’s Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America strikes. But on Friday it was announced that CEO David Zaslav was getting a 26.5 percent raise for a pay package of almost $50 million. Other executives at the company also saw double-digit pay increases. Nice to know there is always money to grossly overpay executives!

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Light At The End Of The Email

Over 50 of RFK Jr.’s former colleagues at the National Resources Defense Council have called on him to drop out of the presidential race, and a dozen other national environmental organizations published an open letter calling him a “dangerous conspiracy theorist and a science denier,” who promotes “toxic beliefs” on vaccines and climate change.
A blood test that rapidly detects concussions has received FDA approval and could be used on the sidelines of football games in the future.
The Biden administration released revised Title IX rules on Friday, extending federal legal protections to LGBT+ students and updating the procedure schools must follow when investigating campus sexual misconduct.

Enjoy

“paula” on Twitter: "thinking about this woman who recorded this as a workout on strava"

"You should’ve deported [Laken Riley] so that she could be alive today." - Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) taking her expertise in Making No Sense to new heights during the House’s sham impeachment hearing of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

Extreme Court

The Supreme Court might be poised to give a gift to January 6 rioters, and Donald Trump by extension.

• The Supreme Court’s Conservative majority seems to be raring to give the ghouls who stormed the capitol on January 6 a handout. Since the riot in 2021, hundreds of January 6 protestors have been charged using a federal obstruction law for attempting to obstruct an official government proceeding—in this case the certification of the 2020 election results.
  
• Justice Clarence Thomas returned from an unexplained absence on Monday to wreak the specific kind of conservative havoc for which he is known, implying that January 6 protesters are being unfairly singled-out. He asked, “There have been many violent protests that have interfered with proceedings…Has the government applied this provision to other protests?” It should be noted that Thomas once went a full decade without asking a single question from the bench, so it’s, uh, interesting that he’s choosing this case that could possibly benefit his buddy disgraced former president Donald Trump to be so active and inquisitive. Thomas’s wife Ginny was herself a participant in behind-the-scenes Trump administration efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Call me crazy but that seems relevant!
  
• Justice Sonia Sotomayor replied to Thomas’s “question” by saying “We’ve never had a situation before…like this with people attempting to stop a proceeding violently.” The law in question is a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which contains a broad catchall provision that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding. Sounds tailor-made for January 6, right? Not according to the Court’s conservative justices. Chief Justice John Roberts said the catchall provision must be read in context. Because the original law had to do with altering evidence, and none of the January 6 defendants are accused of that, he said the provision does not apply. Why a “catchall provision” would be interpreted so narrowly and tethered to the previous clause had some of the liberal justices scratching their heads. Justice Neil Gorsuch—always one to ask questions/big wind-bag—asked: “Would a sit-in that disrupts a trial or access to a federal courthouse qualify? Would a heckler in today’s audience qualify, or at the State of the Union address? Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify for 20 years in federal prison?”
  

If the defendant in this case, Joseph Fischer, prevails, the decision could have major consequences.

• As Melissa Murray put it on Monday’s episode of Strict Scrutiny, the case has wide-ranging implications “not only for Fischer and other rank and file January 6th rioters who have been charged under the statute, but…for the federal case against Donald Trump. Because if Defendant Fischer prevails here, Defendant Trump will see two of the four counts against him in the federal January 6th indictment evaporate.”
  
• But the effect of a ruling rejecting the use of the catchall provision remains hard to predict. Most January 6 defendants have not been charged for the offense in question, and those who have, face other charges as well. In Joseph Fischer’s case, he faces six other charges apart from obstruction. Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith brought the obstruction charge against Donald Trump, but he has said that Trump’s conduct could be considered a crime even under a narrow reading of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
  

The decision is expected in June.

Look No Further Than Crooked Media

Like Commander Biden lying in wait for Secret Service agents, Lovett or Leave It’s April tour dates are just around the corner! Lovett will be at Moontower Comedy Festival in Austin, Texas THIS Sunday on April 21st, with the delightful Joyelle Nicole Johnson, Zach Zucker, The Sklar Brothers and Tim Miller. Also on April 21st in Los Angeles, Pod Save America hosts Tommy Vietor, Dan Pfeiffer, Jon Favreau and Hysteria's own Erin Ryan will be LIVE at the Festival of Books. To get tickets & see if Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It is headed to a city near you, go to https://crooked.com/events.

Under The Radar

GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson is staring down the barrel of becoming the next Kevin McCarthy. Two far-right members of the House delegation (further right than Johnson, even) are threatening to oust him after the Speaker proposed a plan to fund key foreign allies like Ukraine—which members of the Freedom Caucus fiercely oppose. It seems that House Republicans wish to keep swapping out their speakers for more conservative ones until they nominate the ghost of Benito Mussolini. The attacks are, of course, led by MAGA psychos Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY).

What Else?

Treasury Secretary Janey Yellen is preparing new sanctions for Iran after the country waged a counter-attack on Israel Saturday in response to an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Syria on April 1.
House Republicans sent their two shambolic articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate in an election-year attempt to distract the country from Congressional Republicans’ inability to accomplish anything.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for violence against pro-ceasefire protestors (who he erroneously refers to as “pro-Hamas”) saying on X “take matters into your own hands and get them out of the way.” Cool guy!
The University of Southern California denied its 2024 valedictorian Asna Tabassum the chance to give a commencement speech over “security concerns” because Tabassum is a first-generation South-Asian American and Muslim. USC Provost Andrew Guzman wrote in a campus-wide letter: “The intensity of feelings, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement.” Tabassaum said in an online statement: “I am not surprised by those who attempt to propagate hatred. I am surprised that my own university – my home for four years – has abandoned me.”
The value of shares in Trump’s Truth Social media company stock (which debuted with a $8 billion valuation, a number that makes no sense for a company that is built on losing money) has plummeted by about 60 percent in recent weeks.
Only 1 in 3 American adults think Trump broke the law in the New York hush money case, according to a new AP-NORC poll. Sixty-seven percent of Americans are raving lunatics? Sounds right.

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Light At The End Of The Email

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released its final regulations for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act this week, mandating that employers must make a good-faith effort to accommodate workers who require time off to recover from childbirth or to get an abortion. Because this is America, the minimum is unpaid time off with employers having the option to offer paid, which we’re sure they will because corporations are famously always Doing The Right Thing.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will launch $79 million in ads aimed at holding on to the Senate majority during this year’s elections.
Homicides have fallen dramatically over the last year in 8 out of 10 major American cities. Boston has shown the greatest one-year drop in murders, with an 82 percent decrease. [Whispers] Go Sox.
Part of the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles County will be closed for several weeks beginning on Monday to construct the “world’s largest wildlife crossing,” which will span 10 lanes to provide safe passage for wildlife, especially mountain lions.
The Justice Department is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation as soon as next month, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources. Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster in 2010 after the government failed to intervene (Thanks, Obama) and since then, Live Nation has been accused of exorbitant ticket fees, anticompetitive practices, and generally making going to a concert 100 times worse than it should be. A Ticketmaster spokesperson told the Journal that the company “has more competition today than it has ever had, and the deal terms with venues show it has nothing close to monopoly power.” Seems like the courts will decide that now. Well, Swifties, you did it.

Enjoy

Brandy Jensen on Twitter: "male cult leader: I have received a new revelation from the lord. me: let me guess, he wants you to have multip—. cult leader: I am to have multiple wives"

"She’s wearing some sort of Komodo" - Fox News’s Julie Banderas, struggling to identify that Hillary Clinton was wearing…a kaftan to a recent state dinner.

The Struggle Israel

Israel is bracing for a possible retaliatory strike from Iran as the two countries’ long-simmering conflict appears at increasing risk of boiling over.

• Senior American military official Gen. Michael Kurilla arrived in Israel on Thursday amid fears that Iran might launch a strike to avenge an Israeli airstrike in Damascus that killed three senior Iranian commanders. Gen. Kurilla made the trip to coordinate on the expected retaliatory action and to discuss the war in Gaza, according to Defense Department officials who spoke to the New York Times under condition of anonymity.
  
• President Biden has used slightly sharper language regarding Israel in recent weeks, and threatened to withhold American aid unless Israel does more to protect civilians after an Israeli attack on a World Central Kitchen envoy killed seven aid workers, including one American citizen, but that hasn’t resulted in substantive policy changes. On Wednesday, he emphasized that American support for Israel in the face of an Iranian threat is unconditional, saying “our commitment to Israel’s security against these threats from Iran and its proxies is ironclad.” Senior Pentagon officials including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were reportedly frustrated that Israel did not notify the United States before conducting the strike in Syria, according to the Washington Post.
  
• The Israeli airstrike in Damascus was among the most significant attacks in the “shadow war” between Israel and Iran that has been unfolding for the past year. German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said on Thursday that she had spoken to her Iranian counterpart, and her office released a statement stressing the importance of “avoiding further regional escalation,” and the need for “all actors in the region to act responsibly and exercise maximum restraint.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed uninterested in the idea of restraint on Thursday while visiting the Tel Nof Air Base, where he said: “We have determined a simple rule: Whoever harms us, we will harm them.” Well okay then!
  

Meanwhile, conditions in Gaza continue to deteriorate.

• In the week since President Biden issued his sternest words yet for Israel, and despite the Netanyahu government touting what they say is a record number of aid trucks being allowed into Gaza, humanitarian workers and United Nations officials say little has changed in the enclave. The volume of aid has not significantly increased, nor is it reaching the people who need it most. The Israeli government also promised to reopen a crossing in northern Gaza, bring bakeries back online, and establish clear coordination channels with aid workers, but those measures seemingly have yet to be implemented.
  
• U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Samantha Power told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday that conditions in Gaza are “as dire as I have seen in my career.” Ninety-five percent of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million people is estimated to be experiencing crisis levels of hunger. Famine is already underway in Northern Gaza, according to the global Food and Agriculture Organization, the world’s leading body on food crises.
  

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to directly comment on USAID’s assessment, but referenced the FAO’s report that famine is imminent in Gaza.

Look No Further Than Crooked Media

If you’ve ever dreamed of following a podcast around like the Grateful Dead, this is your year! Pod Save America has a ton of great shows coming up on their Democracy or Else tour, headed to Brooklyn, Boston, Madison, Phoenix, Philly, and Ann Arbor. They will also be at the LA Times festival of books on April 21st with appearances by Dan Pfeiffer, Tommy Vietor, Jon Favreau, and Hysteria’s own Erin Ryan! To get tickets, head to https://crooked.com/events now.

Under The Radar

Republicans continue to stumble their way through responding to the Arizona Supreme Court decision to reinstate a near-total ban on abortion from 1864. Fox News’s resident mega-chud Sean Hannity on Wednesday called on Arizona Democrats to simply “get rid of” the law, despite the fact that Copper State Democrats did try to do that and were blocked by Republican lawmakers. The Biden campaign is not wasting time, and on Thursday launched a seven-figure advertising buy in Arizona focused on abortion. National Democratic officials have a clear plan of attack to attach all abortion talking points to disgraced former president Donald Trump, and lay responsibility for our current dystopia at his feet.
Trump, as we know, installed three justices that helped form the conservative Supreme Court court majority that overturned Roe vs. Wade in June 2022. Abortion bans are a massive political liability for Republicans, a fact that hasn’t deterred them from continuing to pursue as many such bans as possible at all levels of government. But there isn’t universal consensus within the Biden campaign on focusing so heavily on abortion. Some within the president’s reelection campaign worry that the singular focus could lead to neglecting other issues that are hurting the president’s approval including inflation, immigration, and student loan debt. Among Democratic voters, Biden’s primary issue continues to be his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

What Else?

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida addressed a joint session of Congress on Thursday, and urged lawmakers not to doubt the “indispensable” role of the United States in world affairs, and warned that Ukraine could “collapse” without American support.
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, the longest-serving member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, announced on Thursday that she will not run for reelection next spring, throwing the hard-won 4-3 liberal majority on the court back into play for conservatives.
Former football star and all-around terrible guy O.J. Simpson has died at the age of 76. Simpson was acquitted of murdering his former wife Nicole Brown in 1995 but later found responsible for her death in a civil lawsuit. He also served nine years in Nevada prison after being convicted in 2008 on twelve counts of armed robbery and kidnapping two sports memorabilia dealers at gunpoint.
Ippei Mizuhara, the longtime interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher and designated hitter Shohei Ohtani, was charged on Thursday with bank fraud for stealing $16 million from the Dodgers to pay off his gambling debts. Misuhara faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Before he died in prison, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny wrote a memoir chronicling his life, his career, and subsequent assassination attempts. It will be published this fall.
Bird flu has been detected in dairy cow herds in eight states, but the disease is not presenting as a respiratory infection as it usually does in other mammals. High concentration of the virus is being found in the milk supply of infected cows.
The Tennessee House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday that would make it illegal to marry your first cousin, but not without a fight from some Republicans. A tough setback for all of our brave soldiers on the front lines of Marrying Your First Cousin.
Guy who constantly complains about how Democrats have killed personal “responsibility” Lt. Gov Mark Robinson (R-NC) failed to file his federal income taxes for five consecutive years between 1998-2003.
Consumer Reports is calling for Lunchables to be removed from school cafeterias across the country after concerning levels of lead (!) and sodium (okay that one we could have guessed) and other potentially-harmful chemicals were found in their products. A petition lobbying the USDA to remove the Kraft Heinz products from the National School Lunch Program has over 14,000 signatures. A spokeswoman for Kraft Heinz told the Washington Post: “All our foods meet strict safety standards that we happily feed to our own families.”

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Light At The End Of The Email

The White House plans to expand the boundaries of two national monuments in California—the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument and the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument—to bolster national conservation efforts.
The Biden administration also announced on Thursday plans to close the “gun show loophole” that has allowed people selling guns online, at gun shows, and other informal venues to circumvent background checks on customers.

Enjoy

rax ‘leads with her crotch’ king on Twitter: "sorry i can’t be her"

Canada first and the bad gameplay let's get some things out of the way

1. Forming an all guys, girls, female, male, whatever alliance is not a bad thing as long as the people themselves are using it to be discriminatory through their gameplay or behavior.
2. Bad gameplay doesn’t mean the gameplay can’t be entertaining.
3. This game involves social manipulation and while we can get mad at people for how they blame, as long as they aren’t awful, they’re allowed to say and be judged by their fellow houseguests, even if we don’t agree with everything they say.
4. Big Brother needs to cast more Asian people, Spanish people, and more types of people in general: not just race, but age, maturity, regions, and different places for casting. Canada’s been better at this than US. We don’t need just one or two tokens for a season, and Big Brother US was accused for a while for regurgitating the same types in cast so much so 23-25 was a breath of fresh air, and it allows for new dynamics.
5. Canada needs to do an All Star season. Agreed. Us needs a second good All Star season.
6. Issues with the gameplay has nothing to do with who these people are outside of the house. A lot of people are falling into this trap.

So the big talking point is Hot Chocolate: (Avery, Lexus, Kayla, Anthony, Spicy). They’re not the only alliance, there’s the Directors (Anthony, Avery, Elijah/GOOSE, Kayla, Lexus, Matthew, Victoria), Anthony and Vic have their agreement meant, the Big Sisters (which has 7 women, two of which are gone), and Hot Chocolate and the Big Sisters Alliance are apparently racist and sexist bigots. I don't get where most of these complains are coming from.

• Anthony and Victoria are running the game,but it’s not because anyone who’s not black is going after them: Anthony’s whole strategy is forming a small collective group to take control, have pawns in the alliance as shields he manipulates to help him go after all the other people going after him. The problem is he has Spicy in the house. Everyone’s targeting Anthony not because he’s black, but because he’s one of the most dominant and social strong Big Brother players in Canada (depending on who you ask), but they don’t realize he’s working with Spicy, and Spicy’s just a bad game player stretching herself trying to play the middle:
  • He even said the former part himself with his goodbye speech. Janine, Donna, and Dinis were all targeting him (rightfully so, he is the big bad of the season). Bayleigh is going after him, and most of the Hot Chocolate alliance realize half of the time they’re doing what he wants them to do. Even Todd, the person people think is this braindead idiot (being absent minded at times doesn’t make you an idiot) figured this out, that’s why Anthony was worried Todd would put him up over Vivek.
  • And no, when I call Anthony the villain the season, I don’t mean he’s some jerk spouting slurs or joining some nationalism rally. A good reality tv villain is either entertaining, does stuff to make people want to get them evicted, and is at least strategic enough to get buy the game while aggravating the people trying to get him out. Anthony being arrogant is not the same thing as saying “down with all white people.”
• And trust me, I don’t like when Big Brother players steam roll a season either. BB19 would have been the worst season for me had Josh not gotten Paul out and BB22 was a boring steamroll with the only drama being toxic. I don’t like the starstruck mentality the cast has with Anthony and Victoria, but I’m at least glad most of them are wisen up or realizing they’re being played. Goose was right, Spicy V was trying to make him target Matthew and Lexus, she’s just spinning to Kayla and Avery like she did nothing wrong even though it’s her fault.
• But Victoria and Avery said “hot chocolate needs to get the marshmallows out of the horse?” Guys, they’re an alliance called Hot Chocolate….don’t some people put marshmallows inside their hot coco when they drink it? It was supposed to be a pun.
  • “But didn’t Hannah from Big Brother US 23 call Brent a cracker?” Here’s what she said. “Even though he thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips, he’s barely a cracker, so…get it together!”
  • Like we’re getting mad at black players for making food puns? That’s almost as dumb as when BB21 Analyse thought that eggplants were made with eggs.
  • In fact, speaking of Spicy, her goal is to get rid of whoever’s targeting her, but now the girls are trying to make her take down Anthony’s shields, which is actually smart because he’ll be forced and outnumbered to work with them. Game wise, them taking Matt out to make Lexus and Anthony stay more loyal fits even if personally, it’s messed up they’re trying to take out the people they’re working with.
  • The issue is with her HOH reign and with them trying to get out Dinis. She got mad at Donna for talking with Tom the same way the girls are mad with Lexus with Matthew, but instead of getting rid of Tom to make Donna loyal even though Donna wouldn’t have betrayed them, she backdoored her own number and all of them realized how stupid it was while Anthony’s cackling in the background encouraging her.
  • That’s what led to her and Avery talking about getting rid of Donna with the hot chocolate line. Donna’s not in the Hot Chocolate alliance!
• There are also people on the sub saying it was sexism that caused Dinis to get evicted. Um…no Dinis got targeted BY THE PERSON WHO HE SAVED! Bayleigh tried to save him and the drama with Elijah mad at her only happened because while she was happy to be off the block, she didn’t want Dinis to go home through that! That's not sexism, that's bad gameplay!

US and the racial hypocrisy
So if anyone’s saying Hot Chocolate’s racist, let me remind you all of what was said on the most racist season of Big Brother. You can watch it for yourself. If you're too lazy to watch, here's a supercut of the racist statements said on Big Brother 15:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_RVOg7CWs8
  • Talking about an asian contestant saying to make fried rice
  • calling getting rid of two black people “black on black crime”
  • speaking in a blaccent to mock another contestant whose clothes and bed they touched
  • calling a black contestant an Aunt Jemina
  • saying Cadence/Monee/Libra are all the same personality being annoying as s**t and are tokens for their respective season.
  • making fun of the gay guy
  • actually saying the n word
  • making fun of someone for being biracial and not knowing if they’re white
  • “girls are superficial c*nts
  • “she has no merits to be her because she’s a black chick,”
  • comparing the only asian contestant to Kim Jun-Um

If anyone in Big Brother Canada 12 has said anything similar to this, valid. But no one has, yet.
But what about Kyle from BB24. Didn't he get unfairly villified for something that he correctly observed while Taylor was some massive racist who used her skin color to win the game? No.

• Context if you didn't watch. From winner to first evicted:
  • Winner and Runner Up: Taylor (black/f), Monte (black/m),
  • Jury: Turner (white/m), Brittany (white/f), Alyssa (white/f), Michael (white/m), Terrance (black/m), Kyle (white/m), Joseph (Arab/m), Jasmine (black/f), Indy (Brazillian/f)
  • Pre Jury: Daniel (white/m), Nicole (asian/f), Ameerah (black/f), Pooch (white/m), Paloma (white/f) walked
• All of the girls formed an alliance without Taylor and Nicole because they saw them talking with the guys with Paloma spreading rumors Taylor was this terrible person even though she talked with the guys to get intel on the guys, and Pooch spreading certain ideas about her “blowing up ”when she found out, and she just cried because she didn’t do anything to those people.
• Kyle found out his showmance was in an opposing alliance that left out the guys in his alliance so him and Joseph, recruited Taylor with Michael, Brittany, Monte, and Turner to form the Leftovers and get out Ameerah, Nicole, and Daniel one by one to get rid of the other members and stop the people bullying her.
• Taylor said she would never put a POC on the block…that’s not true. She said she didn’t want to put another black woman on the block, but she was okay with her alliance members doing it for her. That’s why she targeted Indy (Brazilian), Terrance (who was also black and hated her), Jasmine (said person who hated her even though Taylor wanted to be friends with her).
• Kyle was a recruit who saw BB23 and assumed there’d be another Cookout, but the goal for the Cookout was to get a first black winner outside of Celebrity season, not to hate on the non-white people they befriended and even cried for.
  • It makes sense to an outsider to be worried about it, but the issue was that he weaponized it for game reasons that didn’t even make sense.
  • He assumed Taylor, Monte, Indy, Jasmine, and Joseph were all working together and told Terrance Joseph created the Leftovers (even though he was the founder) to get Terrance to vote out the others and work with Turner, Alyssa, and Terrance to target them after the house turned back to normal.
  • Also, Terrence and Taylor were nominated every other week, Ameerah was evicted because he brought in Taylor to form the Leftovers and they voted her out, Jasmine and Terrence hated Taylor, and he assumed Joseph and Indy were working together because they were minority figures despite the fact around the same time he said that, Taylor put Indy and Terrance on the block: Indy said she wanted to throw hot soup on Taylor for no reason and Terrance actively tried to get rid of Taylor numerous times. He called Monte, who was ride or die for him “the villain of the season,” since week 1, even though Monte wanted to take him and Kyle.
  • Kyle isn’t a bad person, the sane members of the Big Brother know this, and he almost won America’s Favorite Player and most people think he’s a good player, but everyone agrees he let his paranoia get the better of him.
  • What Michael and Brittney did made it look like opportunists, agreed, but Kyle told them he was worried about another Cookout. Both of them tried to talk him out of those because it wouldn’t be fair to judge and it wouldn’t make sense.
    • Also, no one is bringing up the fact that they saved that because Kyle gave into those thoughts and made Turner put Taylor on the block. The plan was to backdoor Michael, but since he won the POV, they were going to put up Monte, someone who was closer to Kyle.
    • In fact when you take race out of the equation, Kyle essentially turned his back on his alliance because of his paranoia, and when they all found out about it, all of them got rightfully upset and pointed out they weren’t going to turn on him in the first place! He destroyed what he built and the people in the alliance had the right to vote him out when he got put up as a replacement nominee That’s how Big Brother works! Why would you want to keep someone in the game if they backstabbed you.
  • And Taylor’s 8-1 win was fair. She explained her game and her situation to the jury, and even before the speech she had locked in votes. Michael said he vote for her and was her ally, Brittany was her friend, she had showmance with Joseph, she bonded with Alyssa, she made sure to make amends with Jasmine and Indy so they left with a good impression of her the weeks they got evicted. Terrance voted for Taylor because of peer pressure (he was a coward who went with the crowd), I though Kyle would’ve voted for Monte, and Turner voted for Monte cuz he thought she’d win. There’s no DEI in having to convince people to give you money.
• So stop with this nonsense.

Over the past month I've written about a lot of bad wrestling. That run (probably) comes to an end today with my look into some of the worst matches in history according to the users of Cagematch, an IMDB-like site for wrestling. Its users can share their ratings on promotions, events, and even individual matches.
This time, I'm looking at the lowest-rated matches in WrestleMania history. ‘Tis the season for all of the sign-pointing, story-finishing, and the wonderful matches that deserve to be contested at The Granddaddy of Them All. ‘Tis also the season to reflect upon all of the terrible matches that didn't deserve said honor but were part of the Showcase of the Immortals anyways.
Please note that matches under five minutes in length are ineligible as Cagematch does not allow for ratings on matches under that threshold by default. That means that classics such as Hulk Hogan versus Yokozuna or the boxing match between Butterbean and Bart Gunn are not included. Despite that limitation, there are still more than enough bad matches to fill this list.
If this sort of thing is up your alley, this is part of a series of posts on really bad wrestling. Yo u can find more in the links below:
Worst Events: WWE WCW Non-WWE/WCW
Worst Matches: WWE WCW Non-WWE/WCW
Ratings accurate as of March 7, 2024, and are on a scale from 0 to 10
#20 (tie): WrestleMania I Andre the Giant vs Big John Studd ($15,000 Body Slam Challenge) - 2.30
We start, appropriately enough, at the beginning.
This should come as no surprise, but the Andre the Giant/Big John Studd match from WrestleMania I - one where Andre would win $15,000 of Studd's money if he could slam Big John but retire from wrestling if he could not - was not a technical showcase. Neither man was exactly fleet of foot (although Andre moved better on this night than he would two years later in his world famous match against Hulk Hogan) so it was all strikes and rest holds. Andre put Studd in a bearhug for a minute and a half (which was more than a quarter of the entire match’s length), then put him in another rest hold just seconds later.
It wasn’t a thrill-a-minute encounter, but the fans did not care in the slightest. The fans absolutely loved The Eighth Wonder of the World and desperately wanted him to get his revenge on Big John. They loudly chanted “Slam! Slam!” during the bearhug, then cheered even louder when he slammed the villain. This is not a match that holds up to scrutiny under current expectations, but in that moment it delivered exactly what it needed to deliver.
#20 (tie): WrestleMania XXIV Melina & Beth Phoenix vs Ashley & Maria (Playboy BunnyMania Lumberjill Match) - 2.30
The lone women’s match on the ‘Mania XXIV card is a tough watch for reasons that have nothing to do with match quality. The recent wave of allegations against Vince McMahon have brought new attention to allegations that Ashley Massaro made against WWE in regards to an assault she suffered while touring with the company and their alleged role in asking her not to report it. Even if you can somehow separate those horrific allegations from what happens in the ring, the Playboy BunnyMania Lumberjill Match is not an enjoyable affair.
WrestleMania XXIV is the first of a six-’Mania stretch where neither the Women’s nor Divas’ Championships were defended at the Showcase of the Immortals. Those champions were either involved in tag matches or not on the card at all. There were more important stories to deal with, like former Playboy cover models Ashley and Candice Michelle trying to talk Maria into posing for the magazine. (Spoiler: they succeeded.) Maria’s on-screen partner, Santino Marella, was not a fan of the idea to say the least. He broke up with Maria and aligned with Melina and WWE Women’s Champion Beth Phoenix, as the women opted to settle things in a Playboy-branded Lumberjill match where Snoop Dogg served as emcee.
The match itself wasn’t the worst women’s match ever, especially considering that both of the babyfaces came into the company through the Diva Search rather than the indies, but it was far from great. The fans were largely disinterested (perhaps because they were still recovering from the previous match, Ric Flair’s WWE retirement match with Shawn Michaels). Not even the electricity cared; the lights went out during the final couple of minutes, and the tech team scrambled to shine a spotlight on the finish.
#19: WrestleMania NY/NJ “The World's Strongest Man” Mark Henry vs Ryback - 2.24
Mark Henry versus Ryback at the WrestleMania that took place in New Jersey (but WWE desperately wanted to loop New York into it as well) was not a great match by any definition of the word, but it wasn't terrible. It was a perfectly serviceable TV match that would have been right at home on a random SmackDown instead of the Showcase of the Immortals.
The match itself is typical big meaty men slapping meat. Ryback was built like a tank and Henry was a legit strongman champion so one would expect nothing less. If you are a fan of big man versus big man matches then you'll probably enjoy the match for what it was… at least until you get to the ending. After a short back-and-forth affair, Ryback hit his Meat Hook Clothesline on Henry. He then impressively picked Henry up for the Shell Shock, but Henry grabbed the ropes and fell into Ryback. The blow knocked the former Nexus member out, allowing Henry to pick up the win. Oddly, when Henry attacked Ryback post-match, Ryback fought back and actually connected with the Shell Shock.
Why didn't they just let him hit the move and pick up the impressive win? Especially since he turned heel the next night and started a program with John Cena? Who knows?
#18: WrestleMania X Lex Luger vs Yokozuna (with guest referee Mr. Perfect) for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship - 2.17
It's never a good sign when fans chant “bulls--t” at the end of a match.
1994 Royal Rumble co-winners Lex Luger and Bret Hart were each given a title match at WrestleMania X. Luger, by virtue of winning a coin toss, got the first crack at champion Yokozuna. The winner would defend the belt in the main event against Bret Hart, who faced brother Owen earlier in the evening to ensure fairness. The Bret versus Owen match is viewed as one of the best in company history. Yoko and Lex’s bout… not so much.
Yokozuna, who was over 560 pounds at the time of Mania X, was already 60 pounds heavier than he was when his character debuted in October 1992. The more weight he gained, the more he struggled with his cardio. He generally needed to work a bit more of a slower style than he had in the past, as evidenced by the inclusion of four separate lengthy rest holds in the middle of the fight. He had to pace himself particularly strictly on this night since a) this match was going to be 15 minutes, and b) he had to work a second match against Bret in the main event.
Like many other bouts on the list, this match had an unsatisfying finish. Luger bodyslammed Yokozuna and hit him with a Running Forearm, then knocked out Yoko’s managers Jim Cornette and Mr. Fuji as they were on the apron. Luger then went to cover the big man, but surprise guest referee Mr. Perfect opted to check on Cornette and Fuji instead of counting the 1-2-3. Luger shoved Perfect in frustration and got disqualified, ending both his title hopes and his WWF main event push.
#17: WrestleMania V Andre the Giant vs Jake "The Snake" Roberts (with guest referee Big John Studd) - 1.92
The gigantism that helped make Andre the Giant into one of the most popular wrestlers in the world took a tremendous toll on his body. That much was apparent at WrestleMania III, where he worked one of the most iconic matches of all time despite his physical limitations. Two years later those limitations were more plentiful and painfully more obvious.
All of that made the choice to have Andre work a ten-minute singles match all the more odd.
Andre clearly struggled throughout his match with Jake “The Snake” Roberts, and it makes for a tough watch. The big man plodded around the ring throughout the contest, and he needed to hang on to the ropes to maintain his balance after nearly every punch he threw. At one point he rammed his shoulder into Roberts’s midsection and stumbled backwards, forcing Jake to act as if he caught Andre with a phantom knee.
There were efforts made to cover up for Andre’s immobility, including the addition of old rival Big John Studd as guest referee and a run-in involving Ted DiBiase attempting to steal Roberts’s snake. Eventually it led to Andre attacking Studd to cause a disqualification, but not before the giant was chased from the ring by The Snake and The Snake’s snake.
#16: WrestleMania XI King Kong Bundy vs The Undertaker (with guest referee Larry Young) - 1.85
The entire basis of the King Kong Bundy vs Undertaker match - aside from the inclusion of real-life MLB umpire Larry Young as referee - was that Million Dollar Corporation member Bundy helped Ted DiBiase steal Taker’s urn. That’s the entire setup; DiBiase has it, and Taker wants it back. It’s a simple conflict, but it works.
So what happens when you settle that conflict a third of the way through the match?
DiBiase brought the urn with him to the ring, because reasons. A couple of minutes into the bout Taker went to the outside, simply grabbed the urn out of DiBiase’s hands, and handed it over to Paul Bearer. Moments later DiBiase called upon Kama, who stole the urn back from Bearer and ran to the backstage area. The story took a turn and advanced to the next phase.
Had this all happened after the match, things would have been just fine. But all of this took place in the opening half of the contest. Taker and Bundy had to finish up the match in a situation where there was no heat and no real stakes because the thing they were fighting for was already gone. The match went from dull to dull and pointless.
#15: WrestleMania IV Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake vs The Honky Tonk Man for the Intercontinental Championship - 1.82
Gunther and The Honky Tonk Man are two vastly different performers who are linked by the Intercontinental Championship. As of this writing, each man had exactly one title defense take place at WrestleMania. Gunther’s defense at Mania 39 against Drew McIntyre and Sheamus, is widely regarded as one of the best WrestleMania matches of all time. HTM’s defense at Mania IV against Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake… isn’t.
There are a few things that are commonly associated with great ‘Mania matches. You will find none of them here

• Great technical work? No. This match was cartoony, even by the standards of the era and even for a match featuring a hairdresser and an Elvis-tangent singer. Brutus went for multiple wind-up punches and seemed more obsessed with cutting hair than winning gold. Honky didn’t do a whole lot of mat work by design, as his entire reign was based on him only hanging on to the title by hook or by crook.
• Non-stop action? No. Honky Tonk Man rolled out of the ring to break up the action on three separate occasions, an impressive feat in a match that lasted less than seven minutes.
• A clean finish? No. While Brother Bruti had HTM in his signature Sleeper, Jimmy Hart whalloped the referee in the back of the head with a megaphone, leading to a disqualification.

#14: WrestleMania VIII Hulk Hogan vs Sid Justice - 1.70
In all fairness to the Hulk Hogan/Sid Justice clash that closed ‘Mania VIII, it wasn’t much different than any of the countless other ‘Hogan faces the Monster of the Week’ bouts in WWF history. And it does close with the memorable return of The Ultimate Warrior after a months-long absence. There are three things that make this match infamous: what the match could have been, how it was promoted, and how it ended.
What could have been: The initially-planned main event for WrestleMania VIII would have seen Hogan challenge Ric Flair for the WWF Championship. It was a dream match for many, as it would have seen WWF’s flagbearer square off against the man who left WCW as its champion and proclaimed himself to be the “real world heavyweight champion” upon his WWF debut. However, after disappointing box office performances when the two worked together on house shows, plans were changed. Instead of Hogan vs Flair, Hogan was paired up with Sid Justice while Flair defended (unsuccessfully) against Randy Savage. The two matches were billed as a double main event, but Savage/Flair was the fifth match of nine on the pay-per-view broadcast. Hogan’s bout, of course, went on last.
How it was promoted: WWF never said outright that this would be Hogan’s final match, but they implied the hell out of it. It’s a tactic that worked at the time, but it feels a whole lot tackier in hindsight knowing that the Hulkster would still be in a wrestling ring 20 years after ‘Mania 8. To be fair, Hogan did leave wrestling after this match… for about 10 months. The fact that his absence happened just as Vince McMahon went on trial for steroid distribution and Hogan had a disastrous interview on The Arsenio Hall Show about the topic was a total coincidence.
How it ended: The most famous part of this match was what happened at the end… or rather, what didn’t happen. Hogan slammed Justice and hit The Big Leg, then went for a cover. Papa Shango was supposed to sneak in and break up the cover, but he either missed his cue or underestimated how long it would take him to get to the ring. Either way, the lack of Shango meant that Sid had to kick out of Hogan’s finisher, making him the first man to do so. Hulk, Sid, and Sid’s manager Harvey Wippleman bungled around in the ring to stall for time until Papa finally arrived.
#13: WrestleMania 2000 Head Cheese ("The Lethal Weapon" Steve Blackman & Al Snow) vs T&A (Test & Albert) - 1.61
Before Al Snow and Steve Blackman began their tag match at WrestleMania 2000, Snow introduced the team’s new mascot: Chester McCheeserton, a little person in a cheese wedge costume with butt cheek holes cut out of the cheese block. Snow then started a “Let’s Go Head Cheese (clap clap clapclapclap)” chant, with Chester slapping his ass for each clap.
And they say that the Attitude Era was worse than we remember.
The odd couple tag team of the deadly-serious Blackman and the off-kilter Snow took on T&A, the new tandem of Test and Albert managed by WWF’s newest signing, Trish Stratus. (Get it? T&A? Test and Albert? Tits and Ass? GET IT?) This was supposed to be a bit of a showcase for the new monster heel team, but the match was hardly spotlight-worthy.
In a bit of an oddity on this list, the match wasn’t notable for big botches or performers who weren’t in great shape or anything like that. Everyone was pretty competent in what they did. The problem was that the match had zero flow. There wasn’t much of a beginning or end, just a long, unstructured middle. There were few periods of extended dominance or back-and-forth, and every pin but the final one was broken up by the non-legal partner. It was just a bunch of A hits B, C hits A, D hits C, rinse and repeat. Things occurred, but nothing really happened. The only really memorable parts of this match were Jim Ross’s mic cutting out, Jim Ross low-key insulting the contest throughout the match when his mic did work (“This match has those bowling shoe tendencies: somewhat ugly”), and Snow and Blackman attacking the mascot after the match.
On the bright side, your patience for sitting through this encounter is rewarded instantly. One of the worst tag matches in ‘Mania history is immediately followed by one of the best: The Hardyz versus The Dudleyz versus Edge and Christian in a three-team Ladder Match.
#12: WrestleMania 35 Kurt Angle vs Baron Corbin - 1.48
Kurt Angle’s final match is on this list because of what it was, but it's also on here because of what it wasn't.
When Angle announced that ‘Mania 35 would be his last hurrah, fans had a laundry list of dream opponents for his final match. Perhaps Brock Lesnar in a rematch of the ‘Mania 19 main event? What about fellow future hall-of-famer Rey Mysterio? Or maybe his last opponent could be the first man he faced in a WWE ring, John Cena?
What Angle and his fans got instead was Baron Corbin.
Corbin wasn't a bad choice in a vacuum. His style was safe and meshed well with the physical limitations Angle had after two decades in the business. He was good at being a heel and really embraced the hatred he received for not being a ‘dream’ opponent, going as far as busting out Cena’s “you can't see me” taunt during the match. But the pick did not go down well with fans, especially since Corbin was seemingly good for three appearances per week on Raw at the time.
The match itself was about what you would expect. Angle brought out some of his greatest hits (as well as his body would allow) and Corbin heeled it up on his way to a victory, running one last bit of mud in the faces of Angle’s fans.
#11: WrestleMania XXVI Bret "The Hitman" Hart vs Vince McMahon (No Holds Barred Match, with guest referee Bruce Hart) - 1.38
On paper, this is a great revenge story. More than a decade after the Montreal Screwiob that led to his departure from the company, Bret Hart returned to WWE. Vince McMahon goaded a revenge-fueled Bret into a match at ‘Mania and, despite having a broken leg, Bret agreed to a No Holds Barred Match. Once the match was signed, The Hitman revealed that his leg was A-OK and that he'd be prepared to destroy his former boss at Vince's own signature event.
At the event, Vince played his final trump card: the entire Hart family. Vince bought off hired DH Smith, Tyson Kidd, Natalya, and the rest of the Harts to serve as lumberjacks for the match, with Bruce Hart serving as guest referee. But in a satisfying double-cross, the family remained aligned with Bret and cheered on as Bret destroyed Vince in an extended squash match.
That's all great, but the segment had no business being TWENTY-TWO MINUTES.
Bret was 52, had retired from wrestling due to concussions, and had suffered a stroke. He obviously couldn't take any bumps so, aside from a brief bit of attacking by the lumberjacks, the entire match consisted of Bret hitting Vince over and over and over and over and over again. It was an 11-minute match that felt like it went 40.
#10: WrestleMania 23 The Great Khali vs Kane - 1.31
The Great Khali is a man who's as big as a tiger and as nimble as a housecat, so long as the housecat is Garfield. Kane is a bit more graceful in his movements compared to the Punjabi Playboy, but only slightly. The idea of having these two behemoths clash at WrestleMania was to create a spectacular demolition derby of violence, but the end result was much closer to a trainwreck.
Kane was not bad as the smaller giant trying to take down the bigger man, but he’s much better as an unstoppable monster than a scrappy underdog. He’s a literal horror movie villain for crying out loud. And if you forgot about that, this match gave you a reminder; Kane used his the chain from his See No Evil chained hook to land a low blow. Khali’s role kept him closer to his strengths, but those strengths weren’t really strong. His movements and strikes were awkward compared to the rest of the roster, so his dominance over smaller wrestlers never really clicked as well as it did for someone like The Big Show or The Undertaker.
Towards the end of the match, Kane bodyslammed Khali in a nod to what Hogan did to Andre the Giant twenty years prior in the same city. As impressive as the feat was, all it really did was drive home the fact that Khali is no Andre.
#9: WrestleMania XX Goldberg vs Brock Lesnar (with guest referee "Stone Cold" Steve Austin) - 1.22
Goldberg versus Brock Lesnar was a slam dunk of a match on paper. Two of the biggest monsters in recent memory engaged in a cross-brand blood feud. Lesnar screwed Goldberg out of a Royal Rumble win, and Goldberg screwed Lesnar out of his WWE Championship. Add in “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, who was named special guest referee and had come to blows with Lesnar, and you had a highly-combustible must-see event.
One problem: Both men decided that they were going to leave the company after ‘Mania. Goldberg, unhappy with the edgy direction of WWE’s product, decided weeks before the event that he was done. Lesnar, burnt out by travel and other demands of life as a WWE Superstar and wanting to try out for the Minnesota Vikings, made his decision known just days before the event.
Okay, I lied. There was a second problem: The fans knew both men were leaving, and they were not happy. They serenaded Lesnar and Goldberg with chants of “you sold out,” “na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye,” “Austin,” and “this match sucks,” among others.
I lied again. There was a third problem: They tried to build tension by not having the pair wait nearly three minutes to actually make contact. The only action of the first five minutes was a pair of lock-ups that ended in stalemates. It took nearly seven minutes - about half of the match’s length - for anything of substance to happen. The fans didn’t get to see anything they enjoyed until after Goldberg got the victory, when Austin dished out Stunners to both of the departing performers.
#8: WrestleMania 33: Randy Orton vs Bray Wyatt for the WWE Championship - 1.21
At some point between its debut and WrestleMania 33, the Bray Wyatt character changed from dangerous charismatic leader of men to dangerous supernatural leader of men. The challenge of leaning into supernatural elements is that it's tough to find the right amount of spooky. You want things to be strange enough that it actually feels supernatural, but not so strange that it doesn't work within the realm of wrestling.
This match did not strike that right balance.
After a short-lived alliance, WWE Champion Wyatt defended his title against Royal Rumble winner Randy Orton. The feud was intensely personal, including Orton burning down the Wyatt Family compound and Wyatt ‘baptising’ himself in Sister Abigail’s ashes, so you know that things were going to get vicious. Not even the sperm-like digital snake that followed Mr. RKO down the aisle could put a damper on this intense encounter.
Wyatt’s secret weapon turned out to be… a projector.
His big psychological play once he gained the upper hand in the match was to run into the corner and project a film clip of maggots onto the ring canvas. He did it twice more with clips of earthworms and roaches. Believe it or not, these non-attacks were not effective. Just as Wyatt was going to follow up post-roach clip, boom. R-K-O, 1-2-3, ding-ding-ding.
Oddly enough, even with the gross slide show, this match is not rated as the worst Orton/Wyatt bout in WrestleMania history. That honor goes to…
#7: WrestleMania 37, Night 2 Randy Orton vs "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt - 1.19
If you thought the first Orton/Wyatt feud was strange, this version ratchets everything up to 11. The promo package starts with Orton setting The Fiend on fire and only gets weirder from there. (Seriously though, does Randy have a thing for fire?)
After a build-up that included a possessed Alexa Bliss, Orton vomiting black goo, and a caramelized Fiend returning by ripping a hole in the ring from underneath and climbing through it, Randy and Fiendie were set to settle the score at ‘Mania 37. The Fiend made his entrance by popping out of a Jack-in-the-box and went on the offensive immediately. The match itself was fairly standard. Nothing in the way of spooky business or extreme violence or anything you'd expect out of a feud where one person immolated the other.
Things didn't get weird until the finish, when The Fiend was set to hit Sister Abigail. At that moment fire shot out from the turnbuckles and Bliss appeared atop the Jack-in-the-box with black goo pouring from her forehead. The visual distracted Fiend long enough to let Randall recover, then boom. R-K-O, 1-2-3, ding-ding-ding. Orton got the hell out of Dodge, leaving Fiend and Bliss staring at each other. The lights went out, and by the time they came back on both demonic figures had disappeared.
How did Wyatt respond to getting betrayed? Essentially, he didn't. His Firefly Funhouse character returned the next night, claiming to look forward to a fresh start. Then he disappeared from TV and got released a few months later.
#6: WrestleMania V The Bushwhackers (Butch & Luke) vs The Fabulous Rougeaus (Jacques & Raymond) - 1.15
The Bushwhackers aren’t remembered for being high ‘workrate’ guys. They weren’t the guys you’d throw out there to have a 30-minute mat classic. They were guys who were able to act a bit goofy and make the fans smile. Their biggest strength was getting the crowd involved.
So what happens when the crowd doesn’t get very involved?
The Men from Down Under faced off against The Fabulous Rougeaus at ‘Mania V, and the crowd was oddly disinterested. The fans cheered loudly when the Bushwhackers entered and cheered just as loudly when they picked up the win. But between those two moments, the faces couldn’t get much of a reaction out of the Trump Plaza crowd. They cleared the ring of the French Canadians (who at this point had started presenting themselves facetiously as all-American guys) and did their signature march to little response. They got on the turnbuckle and appealed to the crowd to little response. They hit a Battering Ram on the villains to little response.
If you’re a fan of what the Bushwhackers do, you probably won’t hate this match. But if you’re not a fan, the match itself combined with the lack of crowd reaction means that you’ll likely find this more painful to get through than their usual fare.
#5: WrestleMania II "Rowdy" Roddy Piper vs Mr. T (Boxing Match) - 0.99
There are a lot of things that WWF tried for WrestleMania 2 that just didn’t work all that well. The card was held across three cities (New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles), meaning that each arena got a small card of matches. The company upped the amount of celebrity involvement to the point of seeming desperate for anyone even mildly recognizable. And they decided to have a staged boxing match as the main event of the New York portion of the card.
Roddy Piper did box at a high amateur level before he became a wrestler. Mr. T won some toughman competitions where boxing matches served as the final round before he became famous, and arguably his most famous role was that of boxer Clubber Lang in Rocky III, so a boxing match made sense. The challenge in staging a boxing match is making it look at least somewhat like a legitimate contest. The pair succeeded… for one round. Rounds 2 and 3, dominated by Piper and T respectively, looked far more like a pro wrestling match where the competitors could only punch. Round 4 was effectively a Strong Style chop battle with boxing gloves, as the pair exchanged blows one at a time without even attempting to cover up before Piper shoved a referee and slammed T to get disqualified.
Part of the lack of chemistry may have been due to personal issues between the pair. Both men were part of WrestleMania I’s main event, and Piper was upset that a celebrity who hadn’t paid his dues was going to be in a prominent spot instead of an actual wrestler. That real-life beef was the basis for the start of their feud, but it’s possible that it reignited during the match. T left a good amount of daylight on a punch that knocked Piper out of the ring, and Piper responded by throwing his wooden stool at T before the start of the fourth round. It may also explain why Piper’s hands (according to him) were taped into a fist before they were gloved, so that he could not do too much damage to the A-Team star.
What was beyond explanation was the absolute mish-mash of celebrities involved in the match. Some made sense, like the two men who served in the corners of Mr. T and Piper respectively: boxing champ “Smokin’” Joe Frazier and trainer Lou Duva. Some were a bit of a stretch, like ring announcer Joan Rivers and commentator Susan St. James (a.k.a. the Wife in “McMillan & Wife”). And then there’s the absolute grab bag of a judging panel: jazz legend Cab Calloway, NBA star “Chocolate Thunder” Darryl Dawkins, and (I kid you not) Watergate co-conspirator G. Gordon Liddy.
#4: WrestleMania IX Giant Gonzalez vs The Undertaker - 0.77
Giant Gonzalez’s one and only WrestleMania appearance is widely cited as the worst of The Undertaker’s 27 matches at The Showcase of the Immortals. The showdown between the two provided a striking visual of Gonzalez (not quite his billed height of 8’, but still massive at 7’7”) towering over the massive Taker. That visual would have looked even cooler had the massive Argentinian not been dressed in a flesh-colored bodysuit airbrushed to make him look like a naked Sasquatch, complete with ass-crack and happy trail.
Things didn’t look much better once the match began. Every move Gonzalez made looked slow and awkward. The blows he landed on Taker looked too slow to cause any damage, and he sold the blows landed on him in a comical way. It was an ugly affair with a disappointing finish; The Undertaker won by disqualification after Gonzalez held a chloroform-soaked rag over his mouth.
This sounds like an indictment of Gonzalez, but his struggles weren’t due to a lack of effort. Much like Andre the Giant, Gonzalez’s career was greatly impacted by his gigantism. His tremendous height made him a potential basketball prospect and led to him being selected with the 54th pick in the 1998 NBA Draft (one spot behind future Sixth Man of the Year Anthony Mason). However, the toll that his size took on his knees was a big reason why he never played a minute in the league. His size got him signed to WCW but his awkwardness kept him from finding success there. The WWF brought him into the company in early 1993, but history soon repeated itself. He was gone from the company by the end of the year, having wrestled in just eight televised matches.
#3: WrestleMania XV Sable vs Tori for the WWF Women’s Championship - 0.63
Tori was put in a prominent position for WrestleMania XV, but she was not set up for success.
Tori challenged Sable for the WWF Women's Championship. Tori was a veteran who had worked in Japan with certified Joshi legends, so a big spotlight match shouldn't have been too much for her… if she had recently worked in Japan. Or recently worked at all. She had taken a five year break from the business, and Mania was just her second match post-hiatus. Sable wasn't exactly in position to lead the match as she had fewer than ten singles matches to her resume at that point.
And if the stakes weren't high enough, this was the first women's match on a Mania card in five years.
When you take all of that into consideration, the end result was hardly a surprise. Tori and Sable had a clunky, awkward match. There was a pair of very obvious botches, one of which saw Tori stumble as she slipped out of the Sable Bomb. The only woman who came out of the match looking impressive was Nicole Bass, who debuted at the end of the contest to help Sable retain.
#2: 25th Anniversary of WrestleMania Miss WrestleMania Battle Royal - 0.25
WWE had two top belts for its women's roster, yet the company did not feel the need to have either one defended at WrestleMania 25 (which, despite its branded name, is NOT the 25th Anniversary of WrestleMania. Your first date with someone is not your first anniversary). Instead, the company invented a new honor for the women to try and win: Miss WrestleMania. The prize was important enough that nearly every woman on the roster fought for it, including Women's Champion Melina and Divas Champion Maryse.
And Santino Marella.
See, the entire match - which was the only women's match on the card - was made for the sole purpose of getting Santino over. He tried qualifying for the match in the run-up to ‘Mania to no avail, but he had a trick up his sleeve.
The match itself was not all that different from the typical Divas Battle Royals of the era, full of nondescript action and a flurry of meaningless eliminations until the final handful remained. The only real differences were that half the women grinded on Kid Rock during the entrance, and there was one unknown woman who was avoiding the action for most of the match until- oh no that's Santino in drag and oh no he just won the match dear God why would they do this.
Surprisingly, this wasn't a one-off joke. Santino actually defended the title of Miss WrestleMania. Multiple times. He lost it and he won it back. He held onto the honor for the better part of three months until his firing at the hands of… Donald Trump, temporary owner of Raw and the man who spoke the Guest Host era into existence.
Late-00s Raw was a fever dream in all of the worst ways imaginable.
#1: WrestleMania XXVII Michael Cole vs Jerry "The King" Lawler (with guest referee "Stone Cold" Steve Austin) - 0.19
A former wrestler and a commentator walk into a ring. Thirty minutes later, they walk out with the honor of having wrestled (according to Cagematch users) the worst match in WWE history.
In 2010, WWE made the odd choice of turning Raw lead commentator Michael Cole heel. The move wasn't bad because Cole was bad in the role; just the opposite. He was good at being the annoying cheerleader for the villains. But he was annoying for the entire show, week in and week out. Couple that with being the voice of the Anonymous Raw General Manager (if you think you want to learn about the Anonymous Raw GM, I can assure you that you don’t) and you have someone who fans wanted to see taken down a peg. The man to do it: Cole's co-commentator Jerry “The King” Lawler.
This match shares the same cardinal sin as the Vince McMahon/Bret Hart match from earlier in the list: it asked way too much of people who were not regular in-ring performers. Michael Cole had never been a wrestler and Lawler was 61 years old, yet they were given an entire 30-minute segment. Granted, most of the 15-minute match is shtick, but that could have easily been compressed into five or six minutes without losing anything.
There is one key difference between Vince/Bret and this bout: Vince/Bret had a satisfying ending. As drawn-out as that match was, it ended with the hero getting his revenge. This match appeared to end with a Lawler victory, but that was reversed by the Anonymous Raw GM due to alleged officiating bias by “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Cole got the win via disqualification since the powers that be decided that the Cole/Lawler feud needed to get stretched out until May.

1. 1990s: The Post-Cold War Decade (Normie 1990s 3.0; the third most populaagreed upon 1990s span)

• Span: December 26, 1991 to September 11, 2001 (Winter 1991/1992 to Summer 2001; 1991-2001 or 1992-2001)
• Bookend events: The USSR Collapse to the September 11th attacks
• Peak year: 1997 [peak of the post-Cold War, pre-9/11 prosperity, epitome of the Dot-Com Boom, peak of Bill Clinton's presidency (last pre-Monica Lewinsky year)]

Divisions:
Halves
Classic 1990s = December 26, 1991 to February 7, 1996 (Autumn 1991 to Winter 1997; 1991-1996 or 1992-1995)

• Bookend events: The USSR Collapse to before the Telecommunications Act of 1996
• Peak year: 1994 (Internet was starting to get popular but last full pre-Windows 95 year, culmination of the early 90s Disney Renaissance's Honeymoon period with The Lion King, OJ Simpson before/after the killing of his wife)

Modern 1990s = February 8, 1996 to September 11, 2001 (Winter 1996 to Summer 2001; 1996-2001)

• Bookend events: The Telecommunications Act of 1996 to the September 11th attacks
• Peak year: 1998 (Monica Lewinsky scandal, peak year of genuine 90s optimism, first post-Princess Diana but last pre-Columbine year, the year both Michael Jordan and Stone Cold Steve Austin have champions)

Thirds
Early 1990s = December 26, 1991 to June 12, 1994 (Winter 1991/1992 to Spring 1994; 1991-1994 or 1992-1994)

• Bookend events: The USSR Collapse to the death of Nicole Brown Simpson
• Peak year: 1993 (peak of Grunge and best year for Nirvana, last full year of Kurt Cobain, mew president but same problems, peak of Nicktoons, Internet is not yet popular but the economy starts to get good and the crime rate begins to gradually decrease)

Mid 1990s = June 13, 1994 to January 16, 1998 (Summer 1994 to Winter 1997/1998; 1994-1998 or 1994-1997)

• Bookend events: After the death of Nicole Brown Simpson to before the Monica Lewinsky scandal
• Peak year: 1996 (Year of the Telecommunications Act, peak of ska, britpop, alternative hip-hop, and early Post-Grunge, The only year that was a pre-and-post Tupac year, peak of East Coast v. West Coast beef, last year of G-Funk and gangsta rap as a whole, last full year for Grunge's relevancy, post-Windows 95, peak of post-1st retirement Bulls MJ)

Late 1990s = January 17, 1998 to September 11, 2001 (1998 to Mid 2001; 1998-2001)

• Bookend events: The Monica Lewinsky scandal to the September 11th attacks (a.k.a. "The Day The World Changed")
• Peak year: 1999 (the year of Columbine, last full year of an excellent 90s economy, peak and culmination of the Y2K hype of the late 90s, absolute peak of the Y2K Aesthetic and trends such as teen pop and boy bands like BSB and their Millennium album, peak of this unique post-Cold War, pre-9/11 vibe portrayed in movies like The Matrix, Fight Club, American Beauty, and Office Space, peak of beach-type bands like Sugar Ray and Smash Mouth, Eminem was around but Dr. Dre dropped 2001, peak of country pop music with Shania Twain and Faith Hill)

2. Clinton 1990s (Bill Clinton's entire administration)

• Span: January 20, 1993 to January 20, 2001 (Winter 1993 to Winter 2000/2001; 1993-2001 or 1993-2000)
• Bookend events: Bill Clinton enters & leaves office (his entire administration)
• Peak year: 1997 (Clinton's second term, peak 90s prosperity, right before Monica Lewinsky)

Divisions:
Halves
Classic 1990s = January 20, 1993 to January 20, 1997 (Winter 1993 to Winter 1996/1997; 1993-1997 or 1993-1996)

• Bookend events: Clinton 1st inauguration to Clinton 2nd inauguration
• Peak year: 1995 (Gun Free Zones Act and Crime Bill are in effect, OJ Simpson trials, OKC bombing)

Modern 1990s = January 20, 1997 to January 20, 2001 (Winter 1997 to Winter 2000/2001; 1997-2001 or 1997-2000)

• Bookend events: Clinton 2nd inauguration to Bush 1st inauguration
• Peak year: 1997 (Clinton's second term, peak 90s prosperity, right before Monica Lewinsky)

Thirds
Early 1990s = January 20, 1993 to April 19, 1995 (1993 to Early 1995; 1993-1995 or 1993-1994)

• Bookend events: Clinton 1st inauguration to the OKC bombing
• Peak year: 1994 (Clinton signs Gun Free Zones Act and Crime Bill; the year of the OJ murder)

Mid 1990s = April 20, 1995 to January 16, 1998 (Spring 1995 to Winter 1997/1998; 1995-1998 or 1995-1997)

• Bookend events: After the OKC bombing to before the Monica Lewinsky scandal
• Peak year: 1996 (Year of the Telecommunications Act)

Late 1990s = January 17, 1998 to January 20, 2001 (Winter 1998 to Winter 2000/2001; 1998-2001 or 1998-2000)

• Bookend events: The Monica Lewinsky scandal to Clinton leaving office
• Peak year: 2000 (least troubling year for Clinton during this time, he's on his way out)

3. 1990s WWF (New Generation & Attitude Era)

• Span: October 12, 1992 to May 5, 2002 (Late 1992 to Early 2002; 1992-2002 or 1993-2001)
• Bookend events: Bret Hart wins 1st WWF title to the Plane Ride From Hell (a.k.a. the last day of the WWF)
• Peak year: 1997 (Raw Is War launch, rise of Stone Cold Steve Austin, peak of WWF/WCW Monday Night Wars, New Generation-Attitude era transition)

Divisions:
Halves
Classic 1990s = October 12, 1992 to March 9, 1997 (Fall 1992 to Winter 1997; 1992-1997 or 1993-1996)

• Bookend events: Bret Hart wins 1st WWF title to before the Raw Is War launch
• Peak year: 1995 (the peak of the New Generation era, one of the worst years in WWF history)

Modern 1990s = March 10, 1997 to May 5, 2002 (Spring 1997 to Spring 2002; 1997-2002 or 1997-2001)

• Bookend events: The Raw Is War launch to the Plane Ride From Hell (a.k.a. the last day of the WWF)
• Peak year: 2000 (The overall best year of the Attitude era and arguably the most representative year of the entire era)

Thirds
Early 1990s = October 12, 1992 to November 26, 1994 (Fall 1992 to Fall 1994; 1992-1994 or 1993-1994)

• Bookend events: Bret Hart wins 1st WWF title to Diesel wins his 1st WWF title
• Peak year: 1993 (Hulk Hogan leaves WWF, the year of Yokozuna, changing of the guard)

Mid 1990s = November 27, 1994 to March 29, 1998 (Fall 1994 to Winter 1998; 1994-1998 or 1995-1997)

• Bookend events: After Diesel wins his 1st WWF title to Austin wins 1st WWF title at Mania XIV
• Peak year: 1996 (Rise of Stone Cold Steve Austin, New Generation acts at their peak but the era is getting edgier with first seeds of the Attitude era, debuts of Mankind and Rocky Maivia)

Late 1990s = March 30, 1998 to May 5, 2002 (Spring 1998 to Spring 2002; 1998-2002 or 1998-2001)

• Bookend events: After Austin wins 1st WWF title at Mania XIV to the Plane Ride From Hell (a.k.a. the last day of the WWF)
• Peak year: 2000 (The overall best year of the Attitude era and arguably the most representative year of the entire era)

4. NBA 1990s (The Jordan Decade)

• Span: June 12, 1991 to April 16, 2003 (Mid 1991 to Early 2003; 1991-2003 or 1991-2002)
• Bookend events: Michael Jordan wins 1st NBA championship to Jordan's final retirement
• Peak year: 1996 (Bulls 72-10 record and Finals win against the Supersonics)

Divisions:
Halves
Classic 1990s = June 12, 1991 to November 2, 1995 (Summer 1991 to Fall 1995; 1991-1995)

• Bookend events: Michael Jordan wins 1st NBA championship to before MJ's first full season back (1995-96') begins
• Peak year: 1992 (Bulls vs. Blazers, iconic 1992 USA Dream Team, arguably MJ's ultimate peak)

Modern 1990s = November 3, 1995 to April 16, 2003 (Late 1995 to Early 2003; 1995-2003 or 1996-2002)

• Bookend events: MJ's first full season back (1995-96') begins to Jordan's final retirement
• Peak year: 2000 (The overall best year of the Attitude era and arguably the most representative year of the entire era)

Thirds
Early 1990s = June 12, 1991 to March 18, 1995 (Summer 1991 to Winter 1995; 1991-1995 or 1991-1994)

• Bookend events: Michael Jordan wins 1st NBA championship to before Jordan's return to the NBA
• Peak year: 1992 (Bulls vs. Blazers, iconic 1992 USA Dream Team, arguably MJ's ultimate peak)

Mid 1990s = March 19, 1995 to January 13, 1999 (Spring 1995 to Winter 1998/1999; 1995-1999 or 1995-1998)

• Bookend events: Jordan's return to the NBA to Jordan's second retirement
• Peak year: 1997 (Jordan's "Flu Game", Bulls vs. Jazz)

Late 1990s = January 14, 1999 to April 16, 2003 (Spring 1998 to Early 2003; 1998-2003 or 1998-2002)

• Bookend events: After Jordan's second retirement to Jordan's final retirement
• Peak year: 2002 (Jordan as a Wizard, last full year in the league, last year of dominance)

5. Economic 1990s

• Span: March 1991 to March 10, 2000 (Spring 1991 to Winter 2000; 1991-2000 or 1991-1999)
• Bookend events: The early 90s recession is over to the NASDAQ peaking, beginning the DotCom bust
• Peak year: 1999 (peak of the 90s dotcom boom and economy)

Divisions:
Halves
Classic 1990s = March 1991 to August 23, 1995 (Spring 1991 to Summer 1995; 1991-1995)

• Bookend events: The early 90s recession is over to before the launch of Windows 95, starting the DotCom boom
• Peak year: 1994 (The economy had fully recovered from the early 90s recession and the internet hype is in place)

Modern 1990s = August 24, 1995 to March 10, 2000 (Late 1995 to Early 2000; 1995-2000 or 1996-1999)

• Bookend events: The launch of Windows 95, starting the DotCom boom to the NASDAQ peaking, beginning the DotCom bust
• Peak year: 1999 (peak of the 90s dotcom boom and economy)

Thirds
Early 1990s = March 1991 to ~mid 1993 (Spring 1991 to ~mid 1993; 1991-1993)

• Bookend events: The early 90s recession is over to the economy fully recovers from the late '80s/early '90s downturn
• Peak year: 1992 (the middle of this change)

Mid 1990s = ~late 1993 to July 1997 (~late 1993 to Mid 1997; 1993-1997 or 1994-1997)

• Bookend events: The economy fully recovers from the late '80s/early '90s downturn to the Asian financial crisis begins
• Peak year: 1995 (Windows 95 launch and beginning of the DotCom boom)

Late 1990s = July 1997 to March 10, 2000 (Summer 1997 to Winter 2000; 1997-2000 or 1997-1999)

• Bookend events: The Asian financial crisis begins to the NASDAQ peaking, beginning the DotCom bust
• Peak year: 1999 (peak of the 90s dotcom boom and economy)

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/politics/brandon-johnson-no-hurry-replace-carlos-ramirez-rosa-zoning-chair
The rumblings are that Brandon Johnson plans to reinstate Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35) as Zoning Committee chair after he stepped down in December.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has yet to name his pick to chair the City Council’s influential Zoning Committee, frustrating those interested in the position and leading some to believe the Fifth Floor is holding out hope that it doesn't have to make a change at all. The future of the position has been in flux since Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, announced he would resign effective Dec. 1 after apologizing to his colleagues for his heavy-handed attempts to prevent a necessary quorum at a November City Council meeting in an effort to block a vote on Chicago’s sanctuary city status. The committee’s vice-chair, freshman Ald. Bennett Lawson, 44th, has chaired two meetings of the body in his place and will run a third on Jan. 23. The City Council must vote on a new chair, so the position is going to remain vacant until at least the February meeting of the body. The absence of a permanent chair — which meets at least once a month to approve zoning changes and considers citywide legislation on development and the city’s building code — is frustrating members of the City Council, including allies of the mayor. Ald. Daniel La Spata, 1st, who is one of at least three vying for the job, told Crain’s “we have a limited amount of time to address how zoning functions, how we're doing zoning and development, how we’re building the city.” “To be honest, it disappoints me that we don’t have a permanent chair yet because we don’t have time to be waiting on the consideration and passage of these policies,” he said.
Ramirez-Rosa's role Ramirez-Rosa narrowly avoided a rare censure from his colleagues after Johnson stepped in to cast the deciding vote in November. Ramirez-Rosa, the unofficial dean of the City Council’s growing progressive cohort, apologized for trying to prevent Ald. Emma Mitts, 37th, from entering the chamber during the tense November meeting and allegedly threatening to block developments in the wards of three other colleagues: Ald. Nicole Lee, 11th; Ald. Chris Taliaferro, 29th, and Ald. Felix Cardona, 31st. Ramirez-Rosa previously denied that he threatened to stall zoning changes in their wards. Ramirez-Rosa did not respond to a recent request to comment for this story, but he told Crain's in December he had not “lobbied” any of his colleagues for their support. The mayor’s press office did not respond to requests for comment. Ramirez-Rosa has reached out to all of the colleagues he apologized to in an attempt to reset their relationships, they all confirmed to Crain’s. Each said he had not specifically attempted to garner their support to stay in the position. But some on the City Council, including Mitts, believe Johnson is holding out hope that after enough time has passed the administration can help smooth things over and keep his longtime ally in the position. Progressive political organizations and community groups criticized the “hasty removal” of Ramirez-Rosa at the time and urged a restorative justice process instead of censure. Johnson and Ramirez-Rosa had two scheduled meetings with Mitts in December at her West Side ward office, according to the mayor’s daily schedule, which Crain obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Mitts confirmed only one meeting occurred after the first was rescheduled. She believes Johnson wants to reinstall Ramirez-Rosa but said the mayor did not broach the subject at the meeting, which she described as awkward. Instead, the mayor brought up vague “missteps” that were made earlier in his administration, she said. “I wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up,” she said. Mitts was later told by colleagues there were some in the progressive movement hoping Ramirez-Rosa would keep the spot. “When I heard (Ramirez-Rosa) was seeking that I was like, ‘I can’t support that,'” she said. A tricky question Who should run the committee is a politically tricky question for Johnson, and he appears to have limited options, according to sources familiar with the behind-the-scenes jockeying. When Johnson’s initial roster of committee chairs was unveiled, the mayor and his allies championed the diversity of those leading committees, and the Latino Caucus wants to keep the zoning chair. The caucus sent a letter to Johnson in December urging the mayor to name a Latino to the position, and some Council members told Crain’s that Johnson made a commitment to do so. But doing so would necessarily limit the pool of candidates. Five members of the Latino Caucus are freshmen and two others, Ald. Felix Cardona, 31st, and Ald. Silvana Tabares, 23rd, are considered too conservative for the progressive administration. Others already chair committees closer to their legislative interests. Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, who co-chairs the Latino Caucus, told Crain’s the caucus has "made it clear to the mayor that it has to remain a Latino position.” Rodriguez Sanchez, a ward neighbor who has been mentored by Ramirez-Rosa during her time on the Council, said, “I believe he is the person that is most well-suited for the position.” "I have a community-driven zoning process in my office because Carlos created one for his office and was kind enough to show me how to do it,” she said. In addition to La Spata, Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, and Ald. Gil Villegas, 36th, have spoken to their colleagues about the job. Vasquez chairs the Committee on Immigration & Refugee Rights, where he’s frequently clashed with the administration over its handling of the migrant crisis. He said he wants the zoning chairmanship because he has ideas on how to “streamline” the development process and remove some of the barriers that arise out of having a “piecemeal” process that is different throughout each of the city’s 50 wards. 'Ambiguity' Not having a permanent chair has led to “ambiguity on the direction, on who to take things to” on zoning issues, he said. Ald. Gil Villegas, 36th, told Crain’s that choosing him would allow Johnson to “expand his network” of allies, arguing that he has the right experience to understand how “zoning is an economic development tool.” “The election is over, and the mayor is now in charge," he said. Villegas was opposed in his re-election bid by a candidate supported by the Chicago Teachers Union and is seen as a moderate with ties to the business community. "Of course he has his allies that helped him get there. But there are a bunch of other aldermen that have the same intention that he has, which is making Chicago better,” he said. La Spata, who is white but is a member of the Latino Caucus because of the large Latino population in his Northwest Side ward, said he believes Johnson could consider a non-Latino for the role. "I think Latino representation and parity is extremely important. I would not be a member of the caucus if I didn't feel like that was worth fighting for," he said. "But I also feel that passion and competence and professional skills related to the subject matter should be equal, if not a greater consideration, in terms of who's chairing the committee." Lawson, the vice-chair who is running the committee in the absence of a full-time chair, said he “has not been told about any long-term plans” for the appointment. In the interim, Lawson said he’ll “be helpful to my colleagues, be smart about development and policy.”

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Ramirez-Rosa is extremely left-NIMBY and continually stifles development in his ward. As Zoning chair he held home construction hostage for political gain. If we want Chicago to provide abundant housing, we can't accept this type of old-school Chicago politics. We need a Zoning Chair with a YIMBY vision.
LTE's are one of the most effective tools that YIMBYs use. Not only are they easily shareable, but legislators actually read them. Nationwide, YIMBY Action has heard that LTE's have had large roles in decision making. They are short (100-500 words depending on outlet) and anyone can submit one. If you plan on referencing Urban Environmentalists, please DM me before submittal so our leads team can approve of content. Below are links to LTE submittal pages:
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Sun-Times
Tribune
Crain's Chicago Business
In These Times (progressive political paper)
Hyde Park Herald
Chicago Reader
Inside Online (NIMBY North Side paper with 3 variations covering different neighborhoods)
Chicago Star Media
Austin Weekly News

Survivor sells its seasons as DVD sets, and each set used to have exactly six players on the cover. These would be the six players that best represented the season, with the only hard rule being that the winner would always be one of them.
I decided to try and figure out who would be the six for each Big Brother season if they sold DVD sets with this format.
I’ll be going by who I think CBS would pick for each cover more than who I think belongs on the cover myself. I’ll also be operating under the assumption that each DVD set was released immediately after the season ended. Although I will also say how my picks would change if the set were released later, and I will say what players could be swapped out and who could replace them.
BB2
Will, Nicole, Monica, Hardy, Bunky, Shannon
Will won, Nicole and Hardy were two power players, Monica was one of the biggest personalities, Bunky was one of the more sympathetic players, and Shannon caused one of the season’s most memorable moments by cleaning the toilet with Hardy’s toothbrush.
You could swap out Shannon for Boogie, and CBS would do this if the DVD set was released while or after BB7 aired.
BB3
Lisa, Danielle, Jason, Marcellus, Roddy, Josh
Lisa won, Danielle and Jason were the power players. Marcellus was the season’s underdogs with the most memorable eviction, Roddy was Danielle’s biggest rival, and Josh was the weird villain/comic relief who made things more hectic.
You could swap out Josh for either Gerry or Chiara
BB4
Jun, Alison, Erika, Jee, Jack, Dana
Jun and Alison were the duo that ran the season, Erika was a dark horse to win, Jee was the rootable player who got duped by his ex. Jack was one of the most likable players, and Dana had a big impact on the season despite going fairly early.
You could swap out Erika for Robert or Nathan.
BB5
Drew, Cowboy, Diane, Nakomis, Jase, Adria/Natalie
Drew won, Cowboy, Nakomis, Adria, and Natalie were part of the season’s major twists, and Diane and Jase’s rivalry was major to the season’s storyline.
I have seven people here instead of six. This is because Natalie and Adria were treated as one player for a good chunk of the season, and I think the cover would reference that by having them share a photo.
Marvin is also a major candidate for the cover. If I had to make room for him, I’d swap out either Cowboy or the twins.
BB6
Maggie, Ivette, Janelle, James, Jennifer, Kaysar
Maggie won, Ivette was a finalist and one of the biggest personalities, Janelle and Kaysar were the faces of the more popular alliance, James was the comp beast/underdog, and Jennifer won the most memorable challenge of the season.
You could swap out Jennifer for April, Howie, or even Eric.
BB7
Boogie, Erika, Janelle, Will, Chicken George, Danielle,
Boogie won, Erika was a UTR player who made a huge move at the 11th hour, Janelle, Will, and Danielle are legends of the game, and Chicken George was the comic relief and a legend in his own right.
For most of the seasons, I tried to avoid just making the F6 the six on the cover. For BB7, the F6 are too collectively iconic for me to not make them the cover. If I had to change it, I’d swap Erika for James or Howie.
BB8
Dick, Danielle, Jameka, Eric, Jessica, Jen
Dick and Danielle are one of the show’s most iconic F2’s, Jameka was a unique personality who came close to winning, Eric and Jessica were a couple who ran the season, and Jen is one of the show’s most memeable players.
Jameka’s the only one here who’s not an absolute lock. You could swap her out for Zach, or maybe Kail or Nick.
BB9
Adam, Sheila, Sharon, Natalie, James, Matt
Adam won, Sheila was a hot mess who turned into a power player, Sharon was the lowkey fan favorite who kept getting screwed by production, Natalie and Matt were central figures in the house, and James was the comp beast/underdog.
Josh is another contender, and you could swap out Matt or James for him.
BB10
Dan, Memphis, Keesha, April, Libra, Jessie
Dan and Memphis were a duo that ran the postjury, Keesha, April, and Libra were the biggest contributors to the season’s chaos, and Jessie was the prejury villain.
This season had such a well rounded cast that, with the exception of Steven and Angie, everyone is a candidate to go on the cover.
BB11
Jordan, Natalie, Kevin, Jeff, Russell, Jessie,
Jordan and Jeff were the show’s most famous showmance, Natalie was the villain/comic relief of the endgame, Kevin was a UTR player who became a frontrunner out of nowhere, Russell was a villain who contributed to the season’s power shift, and Jessie was the twist of the season.
You could swap out Natalie or Kevin for Michele or Ronnie.
BB12
Hayden, Enzo, Britney, Ragen, Matt, Rachel
Hayden won, Enzo founded the dominant alliance, Britney was the fan favorite, Ragen was the season’s twist (the one that worked anyway), Matt was the schemer, and Rachel was the biggest source of conflict in the season.
You could swap out Ragen for either Lane or Brendon.
BB13
Rachel, Jordan, Jeff, Danielle, Kalia, Shelly
Rachel won, Jeff and Jordan are the show’s most famous showmance, Danielle and Kalia were the underdogs of the season, and Shelly successfully played the middle only to get screwed by a twist.
Porsche, Brendon, Lawon and Dominick are my alternates, but I just don’t have room for them.
BB14
Ian, Dan, Britney, Frank, Boogie, Janelle
Ian won, Frank was the fan favorite, Dan, Britney, Boogie, and Janelle were all prominent returning players.
As representatives of the season, Danielle, Shane, and Joe would probably be better picks than Boogie and Janelle. However, Boogie and Janelle are such big names in Big Brother that they’d be put on the cover regardless. Although if this set were released after Will’s restraining order on Boogie, they’d probably swap him out for Danielle or Joe to distance themselves from him.
BB15
Andy, Judd, Elissa, Amanda, Helen, Candace
Andy won, Judd was a comic relief who fell victim to a brutal eviction, Elissa and Helen were fan favorites, Amanda was the villain, and Candace had one of the most memorable exits.
Aaryn is probably one of the best representatives of the season, but it’s not for good reason, and I think CBS would keep her off to distance themselves from her
You could swap out Judd or Candace for Ginamarie, McCray, Jeremy, or Nick
BB16
Derrick, Cody, Frankie, Nicole, Donny, Zach
Derrick and Cody were a duo that ran the season. Frankie was Derrick’s biggest competition and already famous before the season, Nicole and Donny were the underdogs, and Zach was one of the biggest personalities.
You could swap out Zach for Devon. You could also swap out Nicole for Victoria or Amber, but Nicole becomes a lock if this set is released after BB18.
BB17
Steve, Liz/Julia, Vanessa, John, James, Audrey
Steve won, Liz and Julia were the twist of the season, Vanessa was the face of the season, John was possibly the funniest player of all time, James was the fan favorite, and Audrey was the face of the prejury.
Like BB5, Liz and Julia would share a slot in reference to the twin twist.
You could swap out the twins, James, or Audrey for Austin, Jason, or Davonne. If this set is released after BB18, they would definitely include Davonne.
BB18
Nicole, Paul, Victor, Natalie, Michelle, Davonne
Nicole won, Paul and Victor were a duo that were constantly at the center of attention, Natalie emerged as a candidate to win out of nowhere, Michelle was Nicole’s rival and a fairly unique character, and Davonne was the face of the early game.
You could swap out Natalie and Michelle for some combination of James, Paulie, Frank, or Jozea.
BB19
Josh, Paul, Kevin, Alex, Cody, Jessica
Josh won, Paul was the face of the season, Kevin was the comic relief who came surprisingly close to winning, Alex had one of the most brutal betrayals of the season, and Cody and Jessica were the one thing possibly preventing a steamroll.
You could swap out Kevin or Jessica for Raven or Jason
BB20
Kaycee, Tyler, Sam, Brett, Bayleigh, Kaitlyn
Kaycee won, Tyler was the face of the season, Sam was the sweetheart/comic relief, Brett was the villain/comic relief, Bayleigh was the face of the opposing alliance, and Kaitlyn is one of the most unique characters in the show’s history.
You could swap out Sam for JC or Haleigh.
BB21
Jackson, Nicole, Cliff, Tommy, Christie, Kat
Jackson won, Nicole and Cliff were the underdogs, Tommy and Christie were one of the most important duos of the season, and Kat was the comic relief.
You could swap out Kat for Holly, and make this one of the seasons with the whole F6 on the cover. You could also swap out Tommy for Nick or Jack. Although I think CBS would want to keep Jack off the cover.
BB22
Cody, Enzo, Nicole F, Tyler, David, Davonne,
Cody won, Enzo and Nicole were the two allies he had to choose between, Tyler was the guy with the best chance of beating Cody, David created drama through his clunky gameplay, and Davonne was the fan favorite.
You could swap out David for Ian or Janelle. Ian because he represented people’s last hope of there being some sort of power shift this season. Janelle because she’s such a big name she’d be in contention for the cover regardless of how long she lasts in a season.
BB23
Xavier, Derek F, Azah, Kyland, Hannah, Tiffany
For the other seasons, I go over why I think everyone individually belongs on the cover. In this case, the season is so heavily defined by its F6, that I think CBS would just make them the cover.
DX, Claire, Britini, and Frenchmen are all strong candidates individually, but I think CBS would opt for showing The Cookout in its entirety. Although it would be funny to just swap the Derek’s and keep the rest the same.
BB24
Taylor, Monte, Turner, Brittany, Michael, Nicole
Taylor won, Monte was the guy who seemed like he’d win until the last second, Turner was one of the best DR performers and was the HoH who called out the house’s treatment of Taylor, Brittany was the center of conflict during the endgame, Michael broke the record for comp wins, and Nicole would represent the period of the game where the house ganged up on Taylor.
You could swap Nicole for Dan or Paloma, but I think Nicole is the one of the three who CBS would be most ok putting on their promotional material. You could swap Brittany for Alyssa or Jasmine. Kyle and Joseph are also two candidates, but I just don’t think there’s room for them.
BB25
Jag, Matt, Felicia, Cirie, Cory, Cameron
Jag won, Matt was his closest ally, Felicia was one of the most entertaining DR performers, Cirie was the face of the season, Cory was another great DR performer and made one of the biggest moves of the season, and Cameron was the comp beast/underdog who somehow beat Cirie in the AFP vote.
You could swap out Matt of Felicia for America or Jared. Although between being an Olympic athlete and being the first deaf player, I think CBS would really want Matt on their promotional material.

I thought it would be fun to try and figure out each winner’s “lowest point”, by which I mean the point in the season where they seemed to have the worst chance of winning. I made one version for the Survivor sub and one for the Big Brother sub.
Instead of going through the winners in chronological order, I’m going to put them in order of how bad their lowest point was. I’ll be starting with the ones that were more of inconveniences, and ending with the situations that seemed unwinnable.
This is not my way of criticizing any of the winners, as you can get in a bad position through bad luck as well as bad gameplay, and it can be to your credit if you can dig yourself out of these holes to win.
I will not consider how often a player was in a bad position, only how bad of a position they were in at their worst.
I’m only considering a winner’s lowest point from the season they won, so I won’t be looking at BB16 to decide Nicole’s lowest point.
Derrick
Derrick’s lowest point was when Frankie won the F5 HoH. This didn’t put Derrick in any immediate danger, but it did put Frankie really close to winning his way to the end, at which point Derrick would either be cut at F3, or get taken to F2 but probably lose the jury vote.
Luckily, Derrick got one more week to evict Frankie due to the Reset Button, which he was able to take advantage of when Caleb won HoH and Cody won the Veto. We don’t know what would’ve happened without this twist, but regardless, being in a position where you might be evicted in two weeks in the worst case scenario is pretty good for a “lowest point”
Andy
Andy’s lowest point was for the first two weeks of the season, when The Moving Company was in control of the game. This didn’t put Andy on the bottom by any means, but it was the only point in the season where he wasn’t in the core group making decisions, and he could’ve been targeted later, depending on how long The Moving Company stayed in power.
The Moving Company wound up disbanding pretty quickly, putting Andy in a great position for the rest of the season. I also could have picked the F3 as his lowest point, since Ginamarie acknowledged that Andy was the biggest jury threat and that evicting him was her best move, but she was also crying as she said it, so I’m not sure if she would’ve gone through with it.
Jun
Jun’s lowest point was at F9 when she was nominated against Dana. Even though she wasn’t at any risk of being evicted, Dana was in bad standing with the rest of the house, and Jun’s positioning was hurt through association, making it possible that Dana’s target carries over to Jun being the next out.
The opposite wound up happening, as Dana’s absence essentially reset Jun’s game, and she was able to further recover when she formed an F2 deal with Alison
Xavier
Xavier was in a real good position throughout the season. Despite being nominated 5 times, the Cookout ensured that he was never in danger before F6, and his alliance with Kyland ensured he was never in danger after F6. The only time there was a tangible chance of him being evicted was at F3, when Azah initially planned on taking Derek to the end if she won HoH.
Azah wound up wanting to go to the end with Xavier, due to Derek upsetting her throughout the week and basically talking himself out of a guaranteed $75,000. Xavier also won the last HoH anyway, so it didn’t matter what Azah wanted, but this was still the one time Xavier might have lost the season.
Drew
Drew’s lowest point was at F5 when Nakomis nominated him as the target against Cowboy. He realized that they could both be safe if Diane won the Veto and used it on either of them. Although this still meant that Drew would be evicted if anyone besides him or Diane won.
Luckily for Drew, this week’s Veto was designed in a way where the players were allowed to cooperate and help each other, making it much easier for Drew and Cowboy to ensure that Diane wins. I’d have Drew a few slots lower if not for this fact.
Cody
Cody’s lowest point was at F4 when Enzo won HoH, making Cody vulnerable for eviction if Christmas won the Veto. Cody was able to win the Veto himself, allowing him to take out the last player who didn’t want to take him to the end.
Kaycee
Similar to Cody, Kaycee’s lowest point was at F4, when JC won HoH, forcing the trio of her, Tyler, and Angela to finally turn on each other, and creating a situation where Kaycee is evicted if Angela wins the Veto.
While Kaycee and Cody’s situations are very similar, I have Kaycee lower for two reasons...
One, Kaycee and Angela are more evenly matched in challenges than Cody and Christmas.
Two, Cody had Enzo and Nicole fighting for him, while Kaycee was basically facing Angela one on one, since Tyler was throwing the comp, and JC had only one challenge win all season.
Lisa
Lisa’s lowest point was when Danielle won HoH at F4. Since this season had no F4 Veto, this meant that Danielle and Jason had all the power deciding whether Lisa or Amy would go. Lisa was the bigger threat of the two and should’ve been evicted. She was able to survive despite this, but she was still put in the minority and in a position where she’d be evicted anyway unless she won the next HoH.
Hayden
Hayden’s lowest point was at F5 during the Veto challenge. Ragen was nominated as the target, but Lane wasn’t willing to nominate Britney, so he put him next to Enzo. Ragen came really close to winning the Veto, and if he did, Lane would have to choose between evicting Britney, or protecting her by turning on the Brigade.
Luckily, Enzo was able to barely beat Ragen in the Veto, and while Hayden was put up as a replacement anyway, it was fine, as he wasn’t sitting next to another Brigade member, and so had the votes to stay.
Mike Boogie
Mike’s lowest point was when Janelle won the F4 Veto. While Mike was the HoH and didn’t yet have to worry about being evicted, Janelle was the houseguest Mike was the least close with and she was the most dominant physical player in Big Brother, so her making F3 really hurt his chances of making F2.
On top of that, Janelle initially planned on evicting Erika, and if she does, it means Mike no longer has any winning F2 combinations. Luckily for Mike, Erika was able to talk Janelle into evicting Will over her, but the risk of her winning the next HoH and evicting Mike still remained.
Nicole
Nicole’s lowest point was when Paulie broke down and lost control of the game at F10. Paul and Victor got out ahead of this by working with Natalie to weaken Paulie, but Nicole and Corey were still associated with him and on the outs because of it.
Nicole recovered from this by convincing Natalie that Paul was coming after her, and she further bettered her position when she won HoH and pivoted to working with Paul.
Steve
Steve’s lowest point was during Austin’s HoH when John was evicted for the first time. He lost his closest ally, was put outside the majority alliance of Austwins, James, and Meg, and he was exposed for trying to get Vanessa nominated, which added up to him being pretty much on his own.
This damage was undone pretty quickly though. John immediately re-entered the game, Vanessa won HoH and was pragmatic enough to work with them despite going after each other last week, and the majority alliance dissolved the moment they were in trouble.
Maggie
Maggie’s lowest point was when Howie won HoH on week 4. Maggie was the leader of her side of the house, and Howie was a member of the opposing alliance. Under normal circumstances, Maggie would be the target here.
Not only was Maggie able to avoid being targeted herself, but she got Howie to nominate two players from his side, shifting momentum to Maggie and letting her get the majority on the week where she should have been the most vulnerable.
Jordan
Jordan’s lowest point was on week 3 when Jessie nominated Casey instead of Ronnie. There was an effort to flip the vote to keep Casey, which would have meant evicting Jordan, as she was nominated against him. This might have worked if not for her showmance with Jeff.
Even though Jordan survived this week, Casey’s eviction left her outnumbered 3-7. The house was put back on even footing due to a combination of Russell flipping and Jeff getting the Coup D'etat.
Dan
Dan’s lowest point was at the end of week 1, when Brian was evicted. An 8 person alliance was formed with the purpose of targeting Brian, and Dan was his closest ally even during his downfall. This meant there was a high chance of Dan leaving soon after as an easy vote, if he wasn’t the very next boot.
He managed to slowly recover from this by pitching himself as a loyal ally and throwing challenges to lower his threat level. The mega alliance also dissolved due to no longer having a common enemy to unite against, which helped Dan go from an outsider to a swing vote
Adam
Adam’s lowest point was the first week when he was paired up with Sheila, and their constant arguing made them an easy choice for an early boot. Luckily for Adam, he was on a season where everyone seemed to be competing for the title of worst player.
Jacob bad mouthed a player with more power than an HoH, Jenn outed herself for being in a secret relationship, Amanda upset most of the house through her gossiping, and Alison pretended to be in a secret relationship as a prank.
By the time the most chaotic players left, Adam and Sheila were able to settle down, blend in, and make it to F3 together
Will
Will was on the verge of being evicted for basically the whole season, which makes it hard to pick one lowest point. My best pick would be when Boogie was evicted, as this meant Will no longer had any obvious shields to go ahead of him and would have to work extra hard to present himself as someone the house would want to keep around.
He was able to improve his position by getting close with Hardy and Nicole, who saw him as a number for them and kept him around until F4, where he betrayed them at the perfect time.
Rachel
Rachel’s lowest point was at F4 when Porsche won the Veto, ensuring either she or Jordan would be evicted. Rachel was the bigger physical threat of the two, which made it likely that she’d be targeted. Rachel also tends to spiral when in a bad spot, so it was unlikely she’d do anything to turn this around.
Fortunately for Rachel, Jordan encouraged her to try to stay, despite the fact that this would endanger her own game. Once she was centered, Rachel promised to take Porsche to the end if she won the next HoH, which was enough for Porsche to save her this round, in a rare example of Rachel surviving through social maneuvering.
Jackson
Jackson’s lowest point was at the end of F10, when a new six person alliance formed with the purpose of protecting Cliff this week and targeting Jackson and Holly next week. This meant Jackson was coming into next week outnumbered 3-6 at best and 2-7 at worst.
Jackson foiled their plans by winning the next HoH. This is possibly the most a player has benefited from winning a single HoH, as the six person alliance cracked under pressure and turned on each other, while he formed a new alliance with Cliff and Nicole, who stuck with him even when they later had chances to turn on him.
Josh
Josh’s lowest point was in the first week when he took the golden apple. While this kept him safe for the week, it also amplified the negative attention on him and made it clear that he’d be the outcast of the season, either going out early for upsetting people, or going far just because he’s not worth evicting.
Luckily for Josh, the latter happened, as Paul saw him as the perfect person to take to the end, was powerful enough to make this happen, and pissed off enough people for Josh to win anyway.
I also could have gone with when he was nominated against Ramses, as that’s the closest he came to being evicted, but I decided against that, since he had a support group at that point in the game, while on week 1, he was just some guy yelling at everyone.
Ian
Ian’s lowest point was at F4 when Danielle won the Veto. This was his only time being vulnerable in the postjury, and he was the player Danielle was least close with, making him a sitting duck. However, while Dan’s been targeting Ian, he also wanted Shance out first, so he convinced Danielle to let him cast the sole vote, promising to evict Ian, only to evict Shane in one of the show’s greatest betrayals.
I also could’ve gone with the first week when he was the initial target and saved by Boogie winning the Coach’s comp. As bad as that was, it ultimately came down to a bad first impression, and I think it’s at least feasible that he survives even without the Coach’s comp. While at F4, Ian was basically dead in the water, and the circumstances that saved him were borderline miraculous.
Jag
Jag’s lowest point was the two week stretch at F13 when he was evicted, saved by a twist, and then nearly got evicted again.
Jag is the only Big Brother winner to be voted out in the same season he won. Since getting evicted is the biggest thing preventing a win, this alone is enough to put him very low on the list. The fact that he was targeted again the next week makes it even worse. Despite this, I still think I’m justified in keeping him off the very bottom.
For one, the two winners below him were also in a position where they needed a twist and/or canceled eviction to save them. While Jag was the only one to get enough votes to evict him, I consider this a negligible difference. The advantage saving him was played before the votes were cast, and Jag never left the house, so I think this moment is comparable to when someone gets the most votes in Survivor but is saved by an idol.
Second, while Jag was the target twice in a row, he wasn’t targeted as intensely as the two below him. On both weeks, Jag was targeted out of convenience and had a good chunk of the house willing to save him (he would’ve survived Cameron’s HoH if not for Jared and Blue’s showmance, and he survived Jared’s HoH without any twists). Whereas the two winners below him had the house united against them, were personally disliked beyond the game, and had no shot at surviving without their special circumstances.
Dick
Dick’s lowest point was at F9, when he and Danielle failed to backdoor Eric and were now nominated against each other. Not only did they have the entire house gunning for them, but the fact that his daughter was in danger meant that Dick wouldn’t even be playing in his own best interest. He actively tried to get evicted, and wouldn’t use the Veto on himself when he won it.
He ultimately was saved by the America’s player twist. While this gave Dick a sizable advantage, it’s worth noting that America only had control of one player’s actions. If Eric weren’t as good of a player as he was, this twist wouldn’t be nearly enough to save Dick. Beyond that, having Eric on his side wouldn’t have meant anything if Dick and Danielle were both on the block, which meant Dick winning the Veto was still important, even if he didn’t use it on himself.
Taylor
Taylor’s lowest point was in the first week when Daniel nominated her at the Veto meeting. Not only was she the target, but Paloma had everyone convinced she was a vain, manipulative person, which gave her almost no wiggle room to earn trust and gain allies.
Ironically, Taylor got a reprieve from the very person who put her in this position, as Paloma quit, canceling the week’s eviction. This didn’t do much to improve her chances though. She was still the consensus target, and Paloma’s exit encouraged her allies to stay together in her name. It wasn’t until the formation of The Leftovers that Taylor was finally put back into n her feet.
No winner has ever had so much negative attention focused on them as Taylor, and no winner likely will.

100. Amanda Zuckerman
She has a very lopsided skill set and is simultaneously great and terrible at the game. She’s able to run the house for a prolonged period of time, but isn’t tactful enough to make it last all season. If you slapped even an average social game on her great strategic game, she could be a top 20 player.
99. Paulie Calafiore
Another HG with pretty lopsided gameplay. He flakes out really badly in the F10 but was playing really well before that point, basically acting as the king of the house while still being aware enough to throw comps and volunteer as s pawn to lower his threat level.
98. Natalie Negrotti
Showed the potential to be a great player with how she turned the house against Paulie, but also fell apart once she was in a position of power.
97. Kyle Capener
Similar to Paulie, Kyle was one of the best positioned players for most of his season, only to flame out roughly half way through. I have Kyle higher because his downfall came from just one pretty bad misread, while Paulie had more of a full on breakdown.
96. Aaryn Williams
Is justifiably disliked for beliefs she expressed in the house, but if we just look at her as a player, she belongs on this list. She’s underratedly good at competitions, and she made the necessary adjustments when she was on the bottom, pledging loyalty to the power players and marketing herself as a weapon to be used.
95. Marcellus Reynolds
He’s most known for making one especially bad move, but overall, I consider him a decent player. In BB3, he saved himself from a very bad start by bonding with Gerry, and stayed in a good spot through his relationship with Danielle. In BB7, he was on good terms with both sides of the house and was targeted early because this threatened Chilltown’s niche in the game.
Basically, he’s a good social player, but lacks the strategic chops to take advantage of it.
94. Donny Thompson
Was great at competitions and well liked, but couldn’t leverage either to get himself in a power alliance. He was also one of the only players to recognize Derrick’s threat level, but couldn’t do much about it.
93. Victor Arroyo
He’s the only player to be evicted three times in one season, but he was also great at challenges and a great example of someone learning to be good at the game. He went from only having Paul as an ally on week 2, to being in a good position after the prejury, to being the biggest threat to win at F5.
92. Dick Donato
Has a basic understanding of how to play the game. The fact that he won would mean a lot more if not for the America’s Player twist.
91. Jack Owens
Was one of the most liked players of his season, and he was aware of how well positioned Jun and Alison were, but he couldn’t capitalize on these strengths to better his own position.
90. Libra Thompson
Flipped the house not once, but twice. However, she was also a constant source of conflict and so wasn’t able to keep herself in a good position.
89. Shiela Kennedy
Basically a more stable version of Amanda. Her social game also wasn’t the best, but she was still able to take control of the game when needed, first outmaneuvering Josh at F9 to get James nominated over Matt, and then talking Natalie into throwing an HoH when she was the target.
88. Kaysar Ridha
Going just by placement, he has one of the worst track records in BB, but I’d argue he’s a good player despite this. Everytime he played, he had an increased target size from a pregame relationship (first Michael, then Janelle, then Janelle again). While his second and third appearances were mediocre, he had one of the best HoH reigns in his first appearance, going from a 2-10 minority to a 6-5 majority.
87. James Rhine
A well rounded player who’s both good at challenges and has shown the capacity to make good game decisions. Although he can also make some big blunders (like panicking when Maggie won HoH and burning trust with everyone).
86. Matt Hoffman
Carried his alliance in the competitions and was the best positioned in the house halfway through the season. Although he also got lucky with the Diamond Veto and blundered pretty badly when he stayed loyal to the Brigade over Ragen.
85. Danielle Donato
Did a decent job across three seasons, making the end once due to a combination of challenge dominance and the America’s Player twist, and getting middling placements the next two times she played.
84. Joseph Abdin
He played a big role in forming The Leftovers and was one of the best positions from that point until he got screwed by the split house twist. While I don’t think he’s to blame for his low placement, it does make it hard to justify putting him high on a list of people who did make a deep run.
83. Austin Matelson
Portrayed himself as much more of an evil genius than he really was, but was still in a good position for most of the season and did a great job campaigning for his safety on week 5.
82. John McGuire
Always had a good level of awareness regarding the house dynamics, gradually rose in the hierarchy by cooperating with the power players, and could’ve made F2 if not for Steve’s typo on a tiebreaker question.
81. Ivette Corredero
Was good at comps and often the driving force for her alliance’s decisions. She potentially wins the season if she’s a little less argumentative.
80. Josh Martinez
Like Dick, his win had more to do with the type of season he was on than his skill has a player, but he had a big uptick in awareness towards the end. Not only did he realize Paul was the biggest strategic threat, but he also had the restraint to know that being a strategic threat doesn’t equal being a jury threat.
79. Natalie Cunial
A well rounded player who unfortunately got squeezed out in the endgame.
78. Cliff Hogg
Was fairly well positioned despite never being a power player. He had a unique approach where he would pass on opportunities to evict power players and instead use his influence to squeeze loyalty out of them. This paid off well at F13 when he struck a deal with the Six Shooters, but not when he evicted Tommy over Holly at F5.
77. Zach Swerdzewski
Went with the most effective strategy in Big Brother, throwing comps for the first half of the season, racking up wins in the second half, and going to the end with the two biggest jury goats. This last part backfired on him though, when he lost the last HoH and got third place.
76. Michele Ross
Arguably the best physical player of BB11, yet she was able to fly under the radar and was not nominated as a target until the F4.
75. Jerry MacDonald
Was able to avoid being targeted despite constantly getting in arguments and rarely being in the majority. He also has a good chance at winning if he made F2
74. Caleb Reynolds
He’s mainly known for his weird infatuation with Amber and was seen as one of Derrick’s henchmen, but I think there are parts of his game worthy of praise.
He was put on the outs when the Detonators formed, but was third in command by the end of the season. This is because he was both great at comps and willing to go up as a pawn, which made him a great asset. If he approached the game the same way, but was more selfish for the second half of the season, he’d be seen as a great player.
73. McCrae Olson
Was one of the best positioned players for most of the season, until he was put on the bottom due to his association with Amanda. He had a pretty bad HoH at F6, but it was a double eviction and he just got blindsided, so I can understand the misplay.
72. Frank Eudy
Had a solid underdog game in BB14. Not only could he consistently win safety when he needed it, but there were even some times where he survived being the target through his social game.
71. Cory Wurtenberger
Was persuasive enough to break up Cirie’s grip on the game, but was not able to keep himself in a good position after that.
70. James Huling
On BB17, he avoided being targeted for the first half of the season despite his side rarely being in power and him being the biggest threat from his side. On BB18, he was able to make it further, but he also had less win equity.
69. Monica Bailey
She was almost always in the majority, rarely made enemies, and came one HoH away from winning the season. Her playstyle wouldn’t work too well today, but it was great for that era.
68. Liz Nolan
She not only avoided being targeted for most of the season despite being part of a very public trio, but she was the last member of that trio to be targeted despite being at the center and the biggest challenge threat. She also managed to win a 2v1 battle of the block, which had a big impact on the rest of that season.
67. Hardy Ames-Hill
One of the first power players of the show. He has a good shot at winning the season if not for Nicole blanking out and reaching for the blanket at F4.
67. Nicole Schaffrich
Played In lockstep with Hardy and so has a very similar resume. I have her above Hardy both because she went farther than him and because she’s the first player to survive being an HoH’s target
65. Russell Kairouz
He was good at challenges and stayed in a good position for most of the season despite constantly getting in arguments. Although he did unfairly benefit from the Coup D'etat.
64. Matt Turner
He was good at challenges and always used his week in power to evict the biggest threats. Although he never seemed like a power player despite this, which in addition to his feuds with Jasmine and Brittany, really hurt his chances of winning a jury vote.
63. Rachel Reilly
Great at competitions and has shown the capacity to be good at the social strategy, but is overall a messy player who heavily benefited from production interference on the season she won.
62. Jeff Schroeder
A well rounded player who’s both good at challenges and at rallying players behind him, but also benefited from production interference both times he played .
61. Lane Elenburg
Was in the dominant alliance for most of the season, played a big role in turning the house against Matt, and came one vote away from winning the season.
60. Jordan Lloyd
Is arguably the closest a player has come to winning the game twice. Though that’s not as impressive as it seems, considering that she benefited from twists and Jeff’s help in both seasons.
59. Sharon Obermuller
Got very unlucky from being paired with Jacob, to Ryan and Jenn having a pregame relationship, to none of the post jury challenges breaking her way (especially the one with the guinea pig question). Despite this, she stayed in a relatively good spot throughout the season..
58. Ragen Fox
He was the only player to figure out The Brigade on his own, he won the Veto when he needed it twice, and on the week he was evicted. he did everything he could to survive. He barely lost both the HoH and Veto, and put up a good campaign to convince Lane and Britney to keep him.
57. Corey Brooks
Played BB18 in lockstep with Nicole and so was always in about as good of a position as she was.
56. Nicole Anthony
In BB21, she was basically a prototype for Taylor, starting the season in about as bad of a spot as you possibly can, but going far with a great chance of winning once the house stopped pointing all fingers at her and started pointing at each other.
In BB22, she hurt her stock by making a bad misplay with the Safety Suite twist.
55. Felicia Cannon
Was well positioned for about the first third of the season, and even after her alliance fell apart, she was able to squeeze through the cracks, surviving 6 nominations and making it to F4.
54. Cirie Fields
Completely ran the beginning of the game, and while most players would be the next to go after having the house flipped against them, Cirie was able to adjust her threat level and spend the rest of the season in a decent spot until she was finally squeezed out by Jag.
53. Adam Jasinsky
He was in a really bad position through the perjury and made a really bad decision during his F6 HoH. Besides that, he wasn’t anyone’s target from F9 onwards, and he’s one of the few winners who can say he wins at F3 regardless of who wins the last HoH.
52. Holly Allen
Was in a great spot through the premerge, was put on the bottom by her proximity to Jackson, and then got second because Jackson was so dominant in the challenges that she wasn’t able to make herself stand out to the jury.
51. Matt Klotz
The most consistently well positioned player through BB25. He ultimately lost due to a combination of Jag’s dominant endgame performance, and his own lackluster job of pitching his case to the jury. Putting that aside, the fact that he was almost never seen as a threat despite being an Olympic athlete and that he was so consistently in the loop despite being deaf are both extremely impressive.
50. Roddy Mancuso
Was one of the most respected players in the house and survived several attempts by Danielle Reyes to evict her. He could have dominated the season if he were less pious and more cutthroat.
49. Jessica Hughbanks
She was one of the most liked players within her season, and her positioning was only made better due to her relationship with Eric. She possibly wins the game if not for production barring Eric from using the Veto.
48. Keesha Smith
Had a rough start in BB10, but gained a footing when she won HoH, made a deep run, and was arguably the most influential player of the season. The same can’t be said for BB22, but I see her poor performance as a result of her not having her head in the game at the time rather than her actually being bad at the game.
47. Hannah Chaddha
Played a crucial role in getting the Cookout to F6, from talking DX out of competing for the BB Roulette, to talking Claire into competing for the Coin of Destiny so she’d be ineligible for the next HoH. She wasn’t well positioned when it was time for the Cookout to turn on themselves, but she knew this and valued getting them to the end more than winning for herself. She’d have a great shot at winning if she allowed herself to play selfishly.
46. Alison Irwin
She got Nathan to use the Veto on her despite the fact that it would blow up his game, and she and Jun were able to revolutionize the game and be the reason people who play both sides are such big targets. With that being said, she also had no winning F2 combination and was the first out the next time she played.
45. Kevin Campbell
On BB11, he played the middle well, successfully turned Jeff and Russell against each other, and came one challenge away from winning the season. He had a harder time on BB22, but that was a stagnant season where not being in the loop from the start is a death sentence
44. Helen Kim
Flipped the house while both she and her closest ally were on the block, tightened her grip by weaponising Aaryn, and was the frontrunner to win until the 3 AM alliance formed. While her placement was midling, it’s because she was outmaneuvered by Amanda (the most powerful player of the season) and Andy (the best social player of the season).
43. Memphis Garret
Had a decent level of influence and made a deep run both times he played. He was never able to win, but he was also playing against two of the most impressive winning games in the show’s history.
42. Monte Taylor
He played a role in one of Big Brother’s biggest power shifts, stayed in a good position even as The Leftovers turned on each other, is the only US player to be immune from F6 to F2, and ironically would have won the season had he lost the last HoH.
41. Jackson Michi
He’d often let his rivalry with Christie blind his judgment, but he also showed the capacity to put this rivalry aside at F9, dominated the challenges, and told one of the most creative and effective lies in BB history at F5. It wound up being unnecessary to his goal, but he didn’t know that at the time, so it was a move worth making.
40. Ian Terry
Struggled in the beginning of BB14, but quickly found his groove and won the season through being one of the most well liked players and an impressive comp streak. He didn’t make it far on BB22, but I’d argue he still did well, as he was only nominated due to Danielle having to nominate four players, and he nearly got the votes to stay despite sitting next to a Committee member.
39. Frankie Grande
He dominated the game physically. Socially, he arguably did as well as Derrick up until the Jocasta boot, and could’ve won the season if not for the reset button.
38. Michael Bruner
Broke the record for most Vetoes won in a single season, and tactically played about as well as he could have, with the only exception being that he should have targeted the other physical threats a little sooner. Although he also gave one of the best final pleas by an evictee.
37. Jag Bains
Broke the record for both most Vetoes and most total comp wins in a season, is one of the few winners to be in an F3 where he wins no matter who wins HoH, and he pretty masterfully kept Cameron and Cory on the same page at F10.
However, he’s also the only winner to be evicted, lucked out of being evicted again the next week, and he would’ve been targeted from F8 onwards if anyone but himself, Matt, or Bowie won HoH.
36. Xavier Prather
Played a straightforward but effective strategy of throwing comps he didn’t need and gunning for them in the endgame. He was never in any real danger despite being nominated five times, and is one of only two players to be in an F4 where everyone would take him to the end and lose to him. Though his win needs some caveats.
His biggest strategic threats, Tiffany and Hannah, both played to his interests a lot more than they would have if there were already a black winner, and his biggest physical threat, Kyland, made a point of wanting to go to the end with his biggest threat. Both of these factors made his game easier than for the average winner.
35. Kaycee Clark
Physically dominated the second half of the season, and made such a good bond with Tyler, that he was more loyal to her than his showmance, which really paid off, considering how much influence he had over the season.
34. Kalia Booker
Stayed on the vets’ goodside at the start of the season, turned on them in the midgame, and seriously weakened them by F7. She would’ve done even more damage had she not backed out of making a move at F9, but I think that’s an understandable mistake.
33. Jennifer “Nakomis” Dedmon
Played a role in dismantling The Four Horsemen, executed the first ever backdoor, and likely wins BB5 if she could keep Diane on her side.
32. Erika Landin
Made two deep runs, and is one of the few people who can say she outmaneuvered Dr. Will.
31. Karen Ganci
Was the BB5 houseguest most concerned with being liked by players as they were evicted, which resulted in her being the biggest jury threat of the season. Unfortunately, she got squeezed out, as the players in F5 mostly had closer relationships with each other than her.
30. Christie Murphy
Was in a great position up until Jackson’s clutch HoH win at F9, where she was able to adapt by pitching herself as a weapon against Nick. She used her Diamond Veto as a bargaining chip so she could get her way without using it, and I think she survives F6 if it’s not a double eviction and she has more time to make a case to Nicole.
29. Tommy Bracco
Was the most consistently well positioned through all of BB21’s power shifts, and just got squeezed out in the endgame.
28. Lisa Donahue
One of the few players willing to cut a showmance to increase her shot at winning. She stayed close to the power players both before and after The Cartel dissolved, got Danielle and Jason to keep her over Amy, and then punished that mistake by winning the next HoH and the season.
27. Mike “Boogie” Malin
Did terrible on BB2, but found redemption on BB7, when he ran the game with Will and ultimately won the season. People see this season as him being carried by Will, and while I agree Will deserves most of the credit for their success, Boogie has shown he’s capable of playing well on his own in BB14, where he was able to get the target off of Frank’s back when needed.
26. Britney Haynes
Had a solid chance of making the end both times she played. In BB12, she got outplayed by one of the greatest alliances in BB history. In BB14, she got outmaneuvered by one of the greatest players in BB history (and got unlucky with the second Veto twist). Neither of which I can criticize her too heavily for.
25. Porsche Briggs
Successfully toed the line between working with the Vets’ so they wouldn’t target her, and weakening them when the opportunity came. She possibly wins the season if not for Pandora’s Box, but still came as close as you can even with it.
24. Shelly Moore
Stayed loyal to the Vets at first and turned on them at the exact right time, but was screwed by Pandora’s Box.
23. Diane Henry
Successfully led the charge against The Four Horsemen and could’ve won BB5 had she not made a drunken mistake at the end. She did go early in BB7, but she also had a pregame rivalry with Janelle, who is the worst player to have as a rival.
22. Taylor Hale
Had about as bad of a start as possible, but this was just because of people judging her for her career. She was able to get out of this hole by taking the abuse and rarely acting vengeful, which debunked the narratives made about her. She also gave one of the best finale speeches of all time and is the only post BB19 player to win without just racking up a bunch of comps.
21. Steve Moses
Arguably the winner who put the most emphasis on making sure he didn’t seem like a threat, and it worked, as he was able to make F3 by acting as Vanessa’s lapdog until he won that last HoH and knocked her out.
20. JC Mounduix
Showed that it’s still possible to excel in modern Big Brother without comp wins. He constantly pulled the rug from under Foute while still convincing them he was on their side. His one mistake was being too loyal to Level Six. Since he was in the middle, it was best for him to make sure that the two sides of the house were as evenly matched as possible so that he’d always be needed as a number. Once one side got a clear advantage, it made JC expendable.
19. Drew Daniel
He was in a good spot both before and after the Four Horsemen were dismantled, was only in danger of eviction at F5, and overall had one of the smoothest wins of old school Big Brother
18. Paul Abrahamian
Came as close as you possibly can to winning twice in a row. While they benefited from twists in both seasons and made bad mistakes in each endgame, they also showed great skill at the game. They got themselves in a great spot well before Victor returned in BB18, and they had arguably the most dominant strategic game of all time in BB19.
17. Enzo Palumbo
Both times he played, he was part of one of the biggest steamrolls in the show’s history and came close to winning the season. In BB12, he couldn’t win the last HoH to get himself to the end, and in BB22, he played too loyal to Cody.
16. Tiffany Mitchell
Was the single most influential player of BB23 and the reason that The Cookout was able to make it to F6 cleanly. She knew that this result would not be the best for her but made it happen anyway because she wanted to guarantee this season having the first black winner. If there were already a black winner at this point in the show, Tiffany runs circles around everyone.
15. Maggie Ausburn
Used Eric’s eviction to ensure that the rest of her allies never turn on each other for the rest of the season, and got Howie to nominate two members from his side of the house when she should have been the target. Both of these are very impressive acts of manipulation.
14. Jason Guy
Played a similarly deceptive game as Danielle Reyes, yet still had a good chance of winning with the jury. He wins the season if not for Lisa winning the last HoH.
13. Jun Song
Recognized that she had one of the lowest chances of winning a jury vote and so forged a path to the end with the only other player she could beat.
12. Janelle Pierzina
Got third place twice in a row. On BB7, she set the record for most comp wins in a season that went over a decade without being challenged.
BB6 and BB14 also showed her strategic game was pretty solid. On BB6, she played a big part in evicting Eric and evening out the numbers. On BB14, she was the best positioned coach before the reset button.
11. Hayden Moss
Had the most dominant winning game at his point in the show’s history, was able to get on Brendon’s good side despite being the first to target him, and it’s possible he wins the season no matter who wins the final HoH. Though I’m not sure of that.
10. Nicole Franzle
One of the show’s most successful UTR players.
She put up a decent performance on BB16 despite constantly being outside the dominant alliance.
On BB18, she was consistently in the power alliance, but was rarely in danger, as every man of the season was a shield for her.
On BB22, she avoids being targeted despite being a former winner, makes F3, and possibly wins again with a few tweaks to her game
9. Tyler Crispen
Played as good of a game as you can possibly play without winning on BB20 and was a solid contender to win BB22. He was definitely checked out on his second time playing, but I think that’s more indicative of his mental state at the time of the season than his capability as a player, especially since he still came somewhat close to winning despite this.
8. Vanessa Rousso
Vanessa really goes against the conventional wisdom of what it takes to be good at the game. Most great players go far by surrounding themselves with people who trust them and going as long as they can without being recognized as a threat.
Vanessa was one of the biggest targets for most of the season and even her allies didn’t really like working with her, yet Vanessa was always able to survive by convincing the people in power it was in their best interests to keep her one more round despite how little they trusted her. This is a very unstable playstyle, but Vanessa made it work to the point that she’d win the season if she won the last HoH.
7. Eric Stein
He was not allowed to make his own game decisions and he was exposed as untrustworthy by a fan banner, and was still the best positioned player despite this. He was then forced to protect the same players who were targeting him last week, and was not only able to do it, but did it in a way that kept him in a winning position. He likely wins the season if allowed to use the Veto at F7.
6. Danielle Reyes
One of the first people to strategically dominate a season. Danielle’s secret alliance with Jason is one of the biggest reasons that so many players today try to hide who they are and aren’t working with.
The game didn’t come quite as easy to her in BB7, but she was still able to make F6 despite forming a day 1 rivalry with one of the biggest comp beasts in Big Brother history.
5. Cody Calafiore
Has been more consistently in a good position than anyone who’s played two seasons. He made it to the end twice, was only nominated once (on a week where 5 out of 8 players were nominated) and could’ve been the first two time winner had he betrayed Derrick on BB16.
4. Derrick Levasseur
This guy created a playstyle so effective that he’s largely blamed for making Big Brother boring. He went through all of BB16 only being nominated at F3 (if you count that as being nominated), despite this being the season with the most opportunities to be nominated. He’s also the only player besides Xavier to be in an F4 where everyone would take him to the end and lose to him.
His one mistake is that he waited too long to take out Frankie, the one real threat to his game, and he could have paid for this if not for the reset button. I used to think Derrick had the best winning performance in Big Brother, but I’ve since decided this mistake is enough to take that distinction away.
3. Andy Herren
Now here’s my pick for the best winning game. Andy didn’t have as consistent a level of control as Derrick, but he did have practically everyone wanting to work with him, to the point that everyone saw him winning HoH as their best case scenario. You’d think this would make winning HoH disastrous for him, but he ended the week with everyone still trusting him, and even the player he evicted feeling more betrayed by Helen than him.
He also came up with the strategy of “misplacing” personal belongings across the house so he could walk into any room unannounced and catch people whispering. I don’t know if this actually helped him win, but it was still a brilliant idea that has been copied several times since. The only thing keeping him at #3 is the fact that he hasn’t played again, which while not something I can hold against him, it does mean I don’t have the chance to see if he could make lightning strike twice like my top two.
2. Dan Gheesling
He strikes the perfect balance between having very creative approaches to the game and being able to execute his ideas. On BB10, he voted against the house to keep Brian, which he used to market himself as a loyal ally, used the F8 and F7 Veto meetings to stir paranoia so that everyone would continue going after each other, and exploited the fact that the F4 HoH had no power to hide his alliance with Memphis and stay on Keesha’s good side despite being part of the decision to evict her.
On BB14, he continued to make jaw droppingly good plays, first talking Frank into making an F2 deal with him despite being his biggest target minutes ago, and then tricking Danielle into evicting her own boyfriend. He possibly wins a second time if not for this cast being against creating a second winner. Although I’m not sure, as Dan made some brutal betrayals and Ian was a pretty likable finalist.
1. Dr. Will Kirby
The first true Big Brother winner. Will played when the HoH was a brand new mechanic. While most people saw it as the best position you could be in, Will quickly saw the downsides, made a point of avoiding them, and became the first and so far only player to win a season without winning HoH.
On BB7, he was one of the biggest targets due to being the only returning winner, but he was able to reduce his threat level by intentionally playing badly through his “I hate you all” speech, at which point he was free to play circles around everyone, until F4, where there was no hiding the fact that he was the bigger threat between himself and Erika.
When I made this list, I initially had Dan at #1 because he made it to the end both times and I find specific moves of his to be more impressive than Will’s. However, I ultimately decided to put Will at #1 because he was able to understand the game without having a point of reference, and because he played against a stronger cast pound for pound on his second appearance than Dan did.

"[Protracted silence]" - Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) when asked to name the specific crimes for which Republicans are investigating President Biden.
Editor's note: Crooked is closed for the holidays! We'll be right back in your inbox on January 3, 2024. Wishing you a safe and happy holidays and a wonderful new year! Don't doom scroll, and if George Santos tries to come down your chimney, just say "No thank you."
Thank you for riding with me in 2023. [exhales deeply] What a year. - Julia

The Struggle Israel

The gap between U.S. officials and the Israeli government continues to widen as the two countries cannot agree on a timeline for Israel to downshift its bombing campaign in Gaza.

• The White House signaled continued discord with Israel on Friday over the timeline to scale down the war in Gaza. President Biden’s national security adviser said the timing was now the subject of “intensive discussion” between the two countries. Multiple global aid organizations have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and earlier this week Biden said Israel risks losing international support because of “indiscriminate” airstrikes that have killed over 18,000 Palestinian civilians.
  
• Israeli soldiers in east Gaza City mistakenly shot and killed three hostages that had been captured by Hamas in the October 7 attack, according to a Friday statement from the Israel Defense Forces. Separate from these three hostages, the IDF said on friday that it had removed the bodies of three additional hostages from Gaza taken on October 7, including two soldiers and a 28-year-old man named Elia Toledano.
  
• Almost half of the munitions Israel has used in Gaza since the war began have been unguided “dumb bombs” according to a new U.S. intelligence assessment. Some arms experts say this helps explain the staggering civilian death toll in the enclave, and adds to the concerns already raised by humanitarian groups and the United Nations. The use of so many unguided bombs is a key concern among those calling for the United States to condition any further military aid to Israel on the immediate reduction of civilian deaths. The Biden administration has rejected such calls thus far, fearing political backlash from powerful pro-Israel lobbying organizations and Republicans in Congress.
  

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan conducted several high-level discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials on Thursday in an attempt to loosen the diplomatic gridlock.

• Gaza suffered through a second day of a near-total communication blackout on Friday, leaving people in the enclave almost entirely cut off from the outside world and each other. The cause of the blackout remains unknown, but is thought to be the result of an expansion of Israel’s ground operations across the north and south. Israeli strikes have severely damaged telecommunications infrastructure in the enclave over the past two months.
  
• Al-Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa became the latest journalist killed in the conflict after a drone struck near a school in Khan Younis on Friday, according to the news organization. The strike also wounded Al-Jazeera’s Gaza Bureau Chief, Wael al-Dahdouh. Al-Dahdouh has suffered unthinkable personal losses since the conflict began, as his wife and their two children were killed in an airstrike in the Nuseirat refugee camp on October 25. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 64 journalists and media workers have been killed covering the Israel-Hamas conflict since October 7.
  

Jake Sullivan’s Thursday trip to Tel Aviv was the first of many visits planned by senior officials for the coming days. All of the meetings are, according to The Washington Post, expected to have the same message: Washington wants to change the pace of Israel’s bombing campaign. General Charles Brown Jr., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff arrived in Israel on Friday, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is expected to touch down on Monday.

Look No Further Than Crooked Media

Last week, Ben stopped by Pod Save The UK for an unfiltered chat with host Nish Kumar, specifically about Boris Johnson’s recent treatment of Former President Obama. Spoiler alert: it was racist. Plus, Nish & Coco discuss Boris’s disappointing testimony in the UK’s ongoing COVID inquiry. Catch both conversations on Pod Save The World's YouTube, out now!

Under The Radar

The New York Times published a massive investigation into the monumental 2022 Dobbs decision to end the federal right to abortion. The paper used internal documents, contemporaneous notes, and interviews with people close to the Supreme Court to reveal a narrative as illuminating as it is infuriating. The details show just how much maneuvering the conservative justices pulled off to achieve the five-decade-old dream of the anti-choice movement. Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that the court delay announcing its decision to hear the case for months, in an effort to give the appearance of distance from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. The idea was to signal that the justices were still debating whether to take the case, even though it was already cleared. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer (one conservative, the other liberal) worked on their newest colleagues —Justices Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett—to withdraw support for hearing the case. Breyer was then 82, and appealed to his relatively much younger colleagues not to lose public trust in the court with one of their first major cases. So much for that!
We all remember when Politico published a leaked draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in May 2022. At the time, Chief Justice Roberts was still working on a concurring opinion that he had hoped would persuade his colleagues to take a middle-ground position. Behind the scenes, the leak greatly hampered any hope of a compromise and helped lock in conservative unity. Many of the court’s conservative justices moved to eliminate in-person opinion announcements, a practice favored by Justice Ginsburg, particularly oral dissents. The tradition very narrowly survived with Kavanaugh siding with the liberal justices and Chief Justice Roberts. A year and a half later, it is still unclear who leaked the Dobbs decision, but we certainly wouldn’t put it past Alito!

What Else?

The Biden administration handed a major victory to the all-powerful U.S. corn lobby by announcing on Friday that it will recognize an ethanol industry methodology in guidance to companies looking to claim tax credits for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
Former FBI official Charles McGonigal was sentenced to over four years in prison on Thursday after pleading guilty to working for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who is under U.S. sanctions. Prosecutors have called Deripaska Vladimir Putin’s “henchman.”
A London court ruled in favor of Prince Harry on Friday in a landmark lawsuit that he pursued against a British tabloid that hacked his phone.
The What A Day podcast named the late healthcare activist Ady Barkan as their Person of the Year. Listen to the full episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.
The U.S. economy is technically strong, but many Americans are not feeling good about their own economic standing. One culprit? Housing prices that just won’t fall.
An annual “Electeds of Color Holiday Party” has been hosted annually in Boston politics for over a decade. No one complained until this year, now that the city has its first non-white Mayor, Michelle Wu. Funny how that happens!!!

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Light At The End Of The Email

Disgraced former Mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was ordered to pay two Georgia poll workers $148 million on Friday after a jury ruled he falsely accused them of helping to steal the 2020 presidential election from disgraced former president Donald Trump. It’s the most wonderful time of the year!!!
A federal appeals court denied a request to delay a Judge’s decision that North Dakota’s legislative map violates the Voting Rights Act. The judge ruled that the state must redraw its districts after the initial map submitted was found to dilute the voting strength of two Native American tribes.
A different federal appeals court upheld a decision to force the Louisiana State Legislature to redraw its congressional map after the map it submitted was found to dilute the power of the state’s Black voters. It seems like every year we have to tell Republican legislatures: “Hey! Racial gerrymandering is still illegal!
The Congressional Budget Office is now projecting that the U.S. economy will pull off a “soft landing” in 2024, avoiding a recession.

Enjoy

Brandon on Twitter: "Who up feeling the inexplicable and unbearable sadness of being alive."

Well, it's been a bit of a long time since I kept this column updated, but 2023 is coming to an end so what better time to return to give an update on all that's been happening in the Junior tennis world.
I'll start with a brief update on players who featured in the 2020 and 2021 lists of WTA players to watch. As there are loads to get through, I'll focus on the players who might have been sneaking under the radar - although it's worth noting that the 2020 list also included Gauff, Świątek, Fernandez, and Raducanu, and while their various 2023 fortunes are wildly different, there's no denying that they've all gone on to achieve huge status in the sport since 2020. But what of the rest?
2020 players - down since last year (Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva, Daria Lopatetska, Emma Raducanu):
All three players in the "down" group have, to some extent, had seasons shaped by injury disruption. Emma Raducanu's season has been covered more than enough already, and I'll say no more about her beyond expressing my continued hopes that she can enjoy a successful career despite the bumpy last couple of years. Daria Lopatetska was a player who in 2020 showed a lot of promise, but hasn't managed to build on it owing to repeated injuries, and 2023 is no exception apparently, as her ranking continues to slide. It will take something special to turn it around, and at this point I suspect that Lopatetska marks the only true "miss" of the 2020 list. Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva had a fine 2022, but 2023 has been sadly the opposite. Again, long absences seem to have played a part, but two W25 titles is still a disappointing return for the Andorran prodigy when you consider that in 2022 she was winning matches at Tour level.
2020 players - Flat since last year (Alex Eala, Leylah Fernandez, Brenda Fruhvirtova, Linda Fruhvirtova, Robin Montgomery, Camila Osorio, Daria Snigur, Clara Tauson, Wang Xiyu):
A lot of players end up in this group-- I'm taking "flat" with a bit of a wide margin, but, loosely, this means that their ranking hasn't changed significantly, or their 2023 season is otherwise similar to 2022. Alex Eala has nevertheless enjoyed a fine season, as this year marks her first season without any junior competition to distract her. A couple of W25s, and some deep runs elsewhere in ITFs, have kept her steady, but she's still waiting for success at a higher level, and is 0/6 in Tour-level competition. Has a good platform, though, having reached a career-high ranking of 189th. Leylah Fernandez, on the other hand, has had a mixed season, struggling early on, but managing to grab a 250 title late in the year, and has kept herself inside the Top 40. With her lofty standards I know she'll be hoping for much more in 2024.
Brenda Fruhvirtova has also had a solid season, moving away from farming W25 events to picking up bigger ITF titles - it is perhaps harsh to put her in the "flat" column, but that's partly because her ranking hasn't changed much, partly because Mirra Andreeva has put other 16-yea-olds to shame this season, and partly because I am wanting to give her room to grow next year as she (likely) starts to transition to the Main Tour. Elder sister Linda Fruhvirtova started 2023 by briefly reaching the Top 50, but a torrid mid-year run (losing nine matches in a row over the Summer) has held her back, and it's only a couple of late QFs/SFs that kept her from being in the "down" group.
Camila Osorio has had a season at least partly dampened by injury, but seems to have reached her natural current level around the 70-80 ranking range. Clara Tauson is another player who's had to work through injuries, with a surprisingly high four mid-match retirements and one walkover conceded; after the highs of 2021, it might also be difficult for her to retain motivation to play at ITF level, but all the same she's stayed inside the Top 100, which is still an achievement in the circumstances. Wang Xiyu's season has only been a success because of September. Either side of that month, her record is 11/23, but September did bring her first tour title (and first Singles title at all since 2019!), at the Guangzhou 250.
Rounding off the list of players with decent if not spectacular seasons, Daria Snigur has spent most of 2023 competing at upper-tier ITF events, with a couple of titles and a few QFs/SFs to show for it, but remains just inside the Top 150; and Robin Montgomery was briefly inside the Top 150, in part off the back of a maiden tour-level match win at the Miami Masters, but has in the end climbed only a little from 2022. Still early days, though, as she only recently turned 19.
2020 players - Up since last year (Clara Burel, Elisabetta Cocciaretto, Coco Gauff, Iga Świątek, Wang Xinyu):
No need to explain why Gauff is here, as 2023 has been a breakthrough year, and Swiatek's stock continues to rise even if by definition #1 is as high as you can climb. But it's fair to say that Burel has enjoyed something of a breakthrough season, reaching a career high of 51 this week after victory in the Angers WTA125; after I deemed 2022 disappointing, it's good to see Burel starting to make an impression at Tour level, with some 250-level SFs and Fs to her name as well. I would be surprised to see her climb much higher, though.
Cocciaretto's in the "up" column, having won won a first tour-level title (beating Burel, funnily enough!) and reaching the Top 30 for the first time briefly. She hasn't played much tennis since that July title, though - not sure why, but minor injury seems a likely cause - and has slipped back a little. Still, she's shown enough sign that she can be a reliable Top-50 player, and that counts as worthy progress.
Finally, Wang Xinyu has continued her steady climb, breaking the Top 50 on the back of a 4R US Open run and staying there ever since. Still looking for a Tour-level title to back that up, but she's getting where she needs to be to get the favourable draws at 250s, and 2024 could be an important year.
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The 2020 list was not, in fact, mine (see the links above); now I'll look at the players which I did introduce, at the end of 2021.
2021 players - down since last year (Amanda Anisimova, Reese Brantmeier, Elsa Jacquemot, Caty McNally, Matilda Mutavdzic): It feels harsh to include Amanda Anisimova here - in purely tennis terms, there's no denying that she's had a "down" season, but that's entirely attributable to a break for health reasons, and I hope that she enjoys a recovery and either returns to tennis refreshed, or works out what she wants to do instead. Likewise, Caty McNally has had an elbow injury that's wiped out the second half of her season, but was moving along nicely for a steady year otherwise.
Elsa Jacquemot very much has gone backwards, though, for tennis reasons, with the only highlight being qualification for the US Open. One of the juniors who hasn't - yet(?) - managed to take that success up to the adult tour. Matilda Mutavdzic and Reese Brantmeier, meanwhile, arguably shouldn't have been in this list to begin with. Brantmeier has, to be fair, been competing mainly in the US College circuit, and might have a different career in mind long-term; Mutavdzic has only slipped back slightly in the rankings, but at 670th this week and with most of her 14 match wins this year coming at the W15 level, she hasn't done anything to alter that perception. Not every player can be successful, of course, but I regret picking her for this initial "watch-list".
2021 players - flat since last year (Erika Andreeva, Nikola Bartůňková, Daria Egorova, Petra Marčinko, Antonia Ružić, Katie Volynets):
Daria Egorova is a curious case, as she's barely played at all since I covered her in the 2021 list. On the face of it, this is most likely due to injuries. 2023 saw a moderately successful return to the junior tour, but I'm still waiting for a full season to see what she's capable of. There's not much to say about Katie Volynets' season either: third round at the AO, and an SF in Austin, keeping the player with the fun tennis name hovering outside the Top 100.
One of Croatia's two young stars, Antonia Ružić, endured a rough 2022 because of injury, but seems to have had a more complete season. That said, a W40 and W25 title are the only highlights, and she remains at ITF level only for now. The other one, Petra Marčinko, briefly hit the Top 150, but has mainly just consolidated her work of last season. Two W60s and one W25 title this year represent a decent return, but I'm hoping for more of the stand-out junior player of late 202/early 2022. It's a little concerning that she had to retire from her most recent match when it had barely started, and hopefully that isn't too serious. Also, as one of the few players I've seen live, I worry about her serve, so I hope she worked on that since Zagreb this year.
Erika Andreeva has spent 2023 mainly watching the success of her younger sister Mirra; as for her own season, it wasn't going that well, but two WTA125 finals have kept her more-or-less in the same place as she started the year. Lastly, Nikola Bartůňková was perhaps one match away from the "up" column, but missed out on the Junior Wimbledon title to Clervie Ngounoue (more on whom below). Three W25 titles - her first at that level -- and a first tour-level match win make for happy reading, but in spite of all that progress her 2022 season was decent enough to make 2023 "flat" overall.
As an aside, Bartunkova started 2023 by deciding to farm a couple of mid-tier junior events (having exhausted her allowed adult-level tournament quota for the year). Aside from a rusty first match, she breezed through the field -- until she ran into the then-13-year-old Brit Hannah Klugman, who took Bartunkova to a 76 67 75 scoreline. We'll see Hannah later; that match was one of the reasons I was already excited about Hannah, even before the success we'll discuss below.
2021 players - up since last year (Mirra Andreeva, Sara Bejlek, Hannah Klugman, Marta Kostyuk, Clervie Ngounoue, Linda Nosková, Zheng Qinwen):
Zheng Qinwen is the top-ranked player on this list, and while she's only a little higher, 2023 saw her reach the Top 16, get to a Grand Slam QF for the first time, and win her first two WTA Tour titles including a 500. Narrowly missed out on the year-ending WTA Elite Trophy too, losing two tie-breaks to Haddad Maia. All told, has eclipsed the two Wangs, Xinyu and Xiyu, as the dominant Chinese player of this generation. Marta Kostyuk hasn't gained much in ranking either, but also becomes a WTA title holder for the first time this season, and is now established in the Top 40 after a rough 2022 - still struggling a bit with consistency, but as I mentioned last year I suspect that politics and the Ukrainian War have taken their toll on her, as she remains outspoken on the matter.
But while those two players were already established in the Top 100, Linda Nosková is one of the two new arrivals to that elite group. Briefly reaching it last year, she's now broken the Top 500, thanks mainly to two tour-level finals including the Adelaide 500 at the start of the season. Mixed results since then, and 2024 could see her slip back slightly with a fair few points to defend, but having only just turned 19 it's still a great position to be in. And Noskova's 2023 is nothing compared to Mirra Andreeva, who was just inside the Top 300 at the start of the year and was briefly a top-50 player, while still only 16. Mirra started the year still on the Junior tour, reaching three straight finals including the AO final, but it's the Madrid 1000 run that's got her noticed, reaching the last 16; and two equally wonderful runs at the French Open/Wimbledon account for her stellar season. It will be interesting to see what 2024 brings, but Andreeva's still very young so fans will need to be patient while she adjusts to regular tour-level competition.
Sara Bejlek's 2023 has been much more modest, but she's still fought through qualifying for two Slams (AO and French), picked up three titles including a WTA 125, and climbed in the rankings as a result, reaching a career-high 128th this week. Meanwhile, Clervie Ngounoue, while mainly competing on the junior tour, has added the Wimbledon Junior title to her collection, and briefly became Junior #1 as a result. Now it's time to see if she can take that success to the ITF circuit, but early days yet for the 17-year-old.
As a loyal British woman, though, I have to finish with none other than Hannah Klugman. I've been raving about her throughout 2022 and the first half of 2023, when I was still active, but that was mainly about lower-tier junior success -- it's only since I took a break that she's really got going. Aside from being Wimbledon Doubles finalist, highlights are surely (1) breaking Coco Gauff's record as the youngest player to qualify for, and reach the QF of, a W100 -- both at Shrewsbury, where she gave former top-50 player Oceane Dodin quite a fright! -- and (2) becoming the first British girl to win the Orange Bowl title, the most prestigious junior title outside the Slams. All while still only 14! Klugman seems to have a level head, too, commenting quite correctly that the Orange Bowl "doesn't mean anything in the big picture". But I don't care. Klugman is currently the youngest player with an official WTA ranking, sitting at 666th this week. The next few years are all about development, but that's some platform!
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That concludes this review of the 2020/21 field. Tracked this way, it becomes that much clearer how stars can rise and fall, how careers can fluctuate, how not all promising youngsters live up to that promise -- and how much of it can be down to (bad) luck, or ill health. Anisimova, McNally, Lopatetska, Tauson, Raducanu, Fernandez, and a few others, might have been at the top of this list, but for injuries or other health reasons -- and, who knows? In another timeline Gauff or Zheng could have been the unlucky ones!
I'll be back later with a recap of all the young ATP players I've introduced over the years, before wrapping up the year with a new selection of rising stars, who were either unfairly overlooked in 2021 -- most notably 2023 AO/FO champ Alina Korneeva, who I omitted from the 2021 list in favour of Egorova for some reason; and current top-100 teens Ashlyn Krueger and Diana Shnaider-- or have started to emerge in the last couple of years, such as Vicky Mboko, Iva Jovic, and Renata Jamrichová.
Finally, see also this post for a sneak peek at who'll be appearing in the ATP list, as well as all the links to the various earlier posts in this series.
Thanks for reading!