Greetings from the sports desk, tucked away somewhere beneath the main deck of the Good Pirate Ship RedState, where Sammy the Shark and Karl the Kraken are supposedly deep into preparations for their college football preview.
Then again, there is a very real chance they are just watching cartoons.
With heat waves rolling through various parts of the country — hardly a shock in late July — it seems like the right moment to cool things down with a little hockey. On July 29, 2026, the San José Sharks locked up their young franchise star, Macklin Celebrini, with a five-year contract extension carrying a hefty $18.8 million average annual value. That is quite a payday for a player who still is not old enough to legally buy a drink.
The extension makes Celebrini the NHL’s highest-paid player on a per-year basis, and the Sharks have every reason to believe he will justify the investment. His talent is the kind that gets labeled generational without much argument, and his motor is relentless enough to make John Henry look twice during those old man-versus-machine days. It would be no surprise to see him wearing the captain’s “C” next season, a campaign that fans of Los Tiburones are greeting with something that has been in short supply lately: genuine optimism.
Turning to the NFL — and yes, college football coverage is coming soon — the Buffalo Bills have introduced a new alternate jersey as they prepare to open their new stadium this season.
A blue collar town that never backs down.
We are the Nickel City. pic.twitter.com/nDja8yhTMW
— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) July 27, 2026
So far, the response from Bills Mafia has been more grumbling than celebration. Personally, I think the look works, though it would have landed better with a throwback helmet closer to the design Buffalo wore from 1965 through 1973. It still does not top the new alternate jerseys from my team of choice, the Los Angeles Rams…
Legacy isn’t built in a moment… it’s forged. pic.twitter.com/zqwSIjI9J0
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) July 24, 2026
I may be a tad biased.
In news of a far more facepalm-inducing sort, there was some ugliness at the Indiana Fever-Seattle Storm game that took place July 28, 2026, in Seattle. Before the game, a group of fans held a positive protest outside Climate Pledge Arena thanking Fever player Sophie Cunningham for her public statements opposing biological men participating in women’s sports. The fans then went inside to watch the game, where things got ugly.
The Seattle Storm have apologized for the conduct of a co-owner toward to young girls who were supporting Sophie Cunningham on Tuesday night. But footage and testimony shows a further storm of chaos the two girls endured that the team has not addressed. https://t.co/tb7nvpZLJs
— Jackson Thompson (@JackThompsonFOX) July 29, 2026
Aside from the usual musing over why this is a hill progressives are willing to die on, one has to wonder what people at the game were thinking. If one or more members of the Indiana Pacers had shown up in the Fever locker room announcing they now identified as female and wanted to play, and the Fever had said, “sure,” would the Storm be happy with it? Or are they secretly hoping that Shawn Kemp will come out of retirement and play for Seattle? Apparently, too much Starbucks coffee and socialism-lite politics have made Seattle fans and ownership alike forget what the W in WNBA stands for.
Finally, while it was nice that the Storm organization apologized for the co-owner’s outburst — for the record, said co-owner is the spouse of the team’s primary owner — what is genuinely required is a personal apology by her to the girls. Who, in return, could helpfully outline to the co-owner and her wife what a woman is. They seem to be so utterly lacking in self-awareness they don’t know what they are.
