Matt LaFleur and Brian Gutekunst are set to lead the Green Bay Packers for years to come.Apparently headquarters had been inclined to continue irrespective of how the wild card playoff game turned out.
After nearly a week of negotiations, the Packers signed LaFleur to a multi-year contract extension that will guarantee he won’t go into 2026 with just one year left on his deal. At the same time, the Packers were also close to completing a contract extension for Gutekunst.
PackersNews confirmed the status of both deals and learned that executive vice president/director of football operations Russ Ball would also receive a contract extension.
Terms of the deals were not available and it's unclear whether LaFleur and Gutekunst will have matching years on their contracts.
According to a person familiar with the talks with LaFleur, Gutekunst and Ball, the Packers' front office structure is staying the same. All three men will report to President and CEO Ed Policy, who made the decision to extend each of the three men's contracts.The challenge is always whether the turmoil of a coaching change and subsequent rebuild (Admiral Gallery's description of a command change at sea being akin to removing one head and grafting on another applies to coaching changes, irrespective of whether it's an internal promotion or the coaching square dance) is worth doing.
The structure has been in place since 2018 when then-President Mark Murphy decided that the general manager would not have total authority over the football operation as had been the case since general manager Ron Wolf was hired in 1992.
LaFleur’s future with the Packers seemed like it was in question after the Packers suffered an embarrassing wild-card playoff loss to the Chicago Bears on Jan. 10. It was the third time in the past four playoff appearances that the Packers bowed out of the playoffs in their first game.
However, according to a source with knowledge of the talks Policy had with his leadership, there was no hesitation about bringing LaFleur back. As NFL Network had reported prior to the Packers' playoff loss to the Chicago Bears, the final game would not have a bearing on LaFleur's future.
It appears Policy had already decided that LaFleur would remain as head coach provided the two were able to reach a contract agreement. Although it took a week to get the deal done, it appears that it was mostly because Policy had three contracts to negotiate and not because there was any hesitation from LaFleur or Policy.
Part of Policy's decision was whether seven years was enough time for LaFleur to lead the Packers to a Super Bowl. Despite a 76-40-1 regular-season record, LaFleur has gotten the team to the NFC championship game twice, but no further.At the end of Coach LaFleur's second season, we noted,
Policy decided the Packers could win a Super Bowl under LaFleur.
Every so often, a team management does go all in on making a Super Bowl run, and Tampa might have done so making Tom Brady the de facto director of personnel, and perhaps that will work out for them (this year) and perhaps the reckoning with the salary cap and free agency will not haunt them for ten seasons. On the other hand, how often might a management make a big splash on free agency only to wind up with an angry locker room and no playoff appearances to show for it? We know what the standard is, and being regularly in the mix is a better sort of frustration than regularly being out of the mix.The Tom Brady - Rob Gronkowski farewell tour ended with a championship in Tampa Bay, but has anyone heard from them lately? Or would you rather be the Bears, still shuffling after forty years? The Vikings, going zero-for-Bud Grant? The Lions, still carrying the curse of Bobby Layne?
The movie’s soundtrack — including contributions by Hollywood composer Dimitri Tiomkin — plays a central role in It’s a Wonderful Life, underscoring problems and tensions beneath the surface. Some depictions of music and sound beg analysis around how these reflect racist ideas about “proper” musical, social and community norms.Perhaps those depictions "begged" analysis in the sense that nobody would have perceived any cause to offer any, or perhaps the phrase the professor seeks is "provoke analysis," or "prompt me to inject my sensibilities," because that's what a lot of people who claim to be intellectual do these days.
The story stems from the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association, where a crucial scoreboard error early in the game gave the girls basketball team at Academy of Classical Christian Studies the edge over its Apache high school counterpart, as CBS News recently reported.Strictly speaking, once the final horn sounds, the result is official. Sometimes, though, how you play the game does matter more than the result.
Academy coach Brendan King told the network: “As soon as I walked out of the locker room, my stomach kind of turned into knots. And I said: ‘I’m going to need to know if we really won this game or not.’”
King went home that night and watched a recording of the game. He meticulously watched each play and recounted every basket – eventually discovering his team had actually lost.
The game ended with Academy, of Oklahoma City, winning 44-43 on a last-second shot. But King discovered the score was actually 43-42, with the opposing team from Apache High having actually outscored his team – and Academy being erroneously given more points than they had actually earned amid confusion about the scoreboard at one juncture of the game.
King’s team would have legally retained its championship had it stood pat on the result. The Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association rules say that once a game is finished, the score becomes permanent, and there is no way to change the outcome of a completed game.That was the Academy of Classical Christian Studies, and, truly, truly I say unto you, those players will have parables of their own to refer to as they mature and age.
But King approached his team to tell the players of his video review’s findings. And the players all unanimously decided to appeal their own victory with the association, asking for the other team to be recognized for their rightful win – and for them to be assigned a defeat in the game.
The appeal – described by CBS as having no precedent – succeeded. And King hand-delivered the championship plaque to Apache.
Apache’s head coach said she was glad to have won the title. But the coach, Amy Merriweather, also said Academy’s act of honesty and integrity meant more than the actual victory.
“It showed us, you know, there are still good people in this world,” Merriweather said. “It’s something we’ll always remember.”
Students from Academy also spoke with CBS. One student told the outlet that “it would have felt wrong, I think, to have taken the trophy, regardless”.
Another student from Academy said it was a “really good teaching moment” to establish that winning “is not the whole point”.
These people are weirdly disinterested in policy except for policy in service to their psychological issues — marginalizing the poor, minorities, and women who are not properly under their control. See The Symbolic Politics of Status in the MAGA Movement by a couple of academic nerds. Really, it all fits — the obsession with immigrants, often coming from people who are first or second generation Americans themselves (like Trump and Miller). The obsession with enforcing a weirdly un-Christian version of Christianity at a time when people are losing interest in organized religion. The disenfranchisement of minorities, the control of women’s bodies, the dismantling of the social safety net to provide more money for the rich. This is coming from people who, deep down, are terrified of a changing and diverse world. All this locker-room talk is false bravado masking their fears.Perhaps Barbara "Maha" O'Brien should have recognized how pathetic those academic nerds are. Here's the abstract, full of the expected nerdy tics.
While existing explanations emphasize partisanship, economic anxiety, racial resentment, rural identity, and media polarization, we underscore a less-explored explanation for Trump’s core support: it is a status-based social movement. We find that Trump’s activists are not simply voters responding to policy preferences or culture-war appeals but are also participants in a grassroots social movement organized around a shared perception of lost honor, declining esteem, and institutional disrespect. To make this argument we use the concept of the symbolic politics of status to explain how political conflict extends beyond contests over material distribution or moral values to include battles over whose values and lifestyles are considered worthy. For MAGA activists, reclaiming lost status means seeking public affirmation for identities they feel have been unfairly denigrated. The MAGA movement blends grievance with joy, cultivating pride, belonging, and celebration alongside anger at elites. By centering status in our analysis, we offer an integrative framework that connects material, cultural, and emotional motivations into a broader account of MAGA as a right-wing social movement grounded in grassroots populism.All of what you'd expect of a Minimal Publishable Unit in Perspectives in Politics. None of it of any value. A chart in Ruy "Liberal Patriot" Teixeira's "Democrats and 'The Vision Thing'" does more than all the culture-studies-integrative-framework bafflegab can ever do.
Those in the Brewers organization insist there is no classified formula for their success, but the answer might be best summed up in an internal game the organization plays called the "Check Game."It's not privilege shaming. It's a tradition a generational player might not buy into. It works as a team-building activity.
"It started in the coach's room," Brewers manager Pat Murphy told ESPN recently. "To remind us, it's not about us. It's about the team. Anyone is fair game."
The rules of the Check Game are simple. If you talk about your own accolades, you get a check. If you try to defend yourself, that's a check. If you pass on blame to someone else, that might be a check as well.
"And if you bitch about a check, you get a bigger check," Murphy said with a smile.
"[General manager] Matt Arnold was a two-time defending champion. If he said something about a player like, 'We drafted him in Tampa,' that was a check."
The point of the game exemplifies the concerted effort across the organization to align the different departments, so every voice is heard and valued -- and the game makes it clear to everyone that making the team better is more important than who gets the credit.The way baseball works, it might be the bottom of the order that has to start the rally and bring the top of the order up to bat, and thinking of yourself as that Little League kid remembering to protect the plate with two strikes and make the pitcher pitch to you gets you on base more effectively than trying to be what you're not.
"The Check Game is a really important game inside the clubhouse and the culture and the ecosystem of the team," Brewers play-by-play announcer Brian Anderson said. "It's a little bit of a borderline shaming game, so if you're in it for yourself, you're going to get a check and you're going to be on that board.
"No one wants to be on that board."
The Brewers can go toe-to-toe with the $300 million powerhouses at the top of the National League standings because instead of trying to compete dollar for dollar, they've created the kind of unique environment that the Check Game fosters. It's a vibe that feels more like the atmosphere in a college locker room than what you would expect in a professional clubhouse.So this season has gone. "After making history at Yankee Stadium for a number of the wrong reasons, the Milwaukee Brewers won their home opening series." You don't give up on the season after a week, you steal a lot of bases on Easter Sunday, you cash in on the George Webb promotion, and you better not let up once you're the first team into the playoffs. Maybe mentioning the playoffs too loudly gets you a check.
As you make your way through American Family Field on game day, you come to understand that notion when you hear the team's manager, known simply as Murph throughout Milwaukee, refer to his first- and second-year players as "freshmen" and "sophomores."
Murphy, 66, coached 22 years at the collegiate ranks, first at Notre Dame and then Arizona State, and old habits die hard.
"We joke around with each other and say that it's Milwaukee Community College just because that's how we play the game and that's the kind of guys we have," Christian Yelich said. "And Murph's the manager and there's a lot more talks about fundamentals and baserunning and little details of a game that you might hear in college."
Murphy waves off any talk that his team performs fundamentals better than most. He even gets text messages about his club's ability to do the little things from friends -- but he won't take the bait and risk receiving a check in the game he helped cultivate.
"I don't think we have a secret sauce, and I don't think we do things that much better than anyone else," he said. "We've got a great group that competes. We're under construction. We're not setting limits on what we can do. How do we get better today? That's the emphasis. That will always be the emphasis."
Sophie Cunningham twerking after winning the Cup 😠pic.twitter.com/Z7VTXIG4jV
— BricksCenter (@BricksCenter) July 2, 2025
The Fever’s win proved they’re more than just the Caitlin Clark show. They’re deep, resilient, and capable of rising under pressure. And Sophie Cunningham? She’s now the unofficial hype queen of a team brimming with confidence.We'll see. Didn't the Milwaukee Bucks win the men's equivalent of that in-season tournament and then make an early exit from the playoffs?
While Commissioner’s Cup wins don’t count toward regular season standings, they carry real weight in pride and prize money. The Fever’s $500,000 win shows a rising powerhouse, and Cunningham’s postgame twerk, for better or worse, ensured the moment wasn’t forgotten.
As for Caitlin Clark, her focus remains on getting healthy. But between her playful jabs on Instagram and the Fever’s statement win without her, Indiana fans suddenly find themselves with something rare: swagger, depth, and momentum.
In 2025, the Fever aren’t just competing. They’re vibing and dancing, all the way to relevance.
My passion for architecture is rooted in the vacations of my youth, when my family would wander through the historical towns of the eastern United States. I was captivated by these places: brick homes, boxwood-lined walkways, and grand porches and arcades. The architectural features of these historical buildings seemed to tell a story with every detail.Nor should it have. "The only constant is change" is a profound-sounding statement that comes to grief against the reality that emergence cannot be planned. That's true of urban structure, but there aren't as many grants to be had in understanding emergence as there are in attempting to control it. "Complex adaptive systems tend to do what they d**n well please, including the complex adaptive systems we know as cities, or as metropolitan areas. And somewhere (perhaps it goes back to Daedalus sketching pretty lines in the sand) comes the idea that something so built must require intelligent design."
While other children may have groaned during historical walking tours, I absorbed them. I wanted to design buildings like those. I wanted to contribute to the long and rich history of these places that celebrated tradition and humanity. But when I reached high school in the late 1990s and began looking at architecture schools, it did not take very long to realize how out of step my desire for traditional architecture was with the prevailing orthodoxy of the architectural academy. Architectural education had largely abandoned traditional patterns. Glass boxes, stark modernism, and “innovation for innovation’s sake” dominated the curriculum.
None of that resonated with me.
Democrats looked like fools Tuesday night. We don’t need to dwell on how they sat grim-faced, seething, or walked out while the president spoke. One stood, yelled, brandished his cane and was removed by the sergeant at arms. Others held up little paddles bearing little insults. Some wore special color-coded outfits. Almost all refused to show normal warmth or engagement. From my notes, as the camera turned and dwelled on the furious faces: “They look like the green room in hell.”Forty years ago, Ronald Reagan was a serious president, and the San Francisco Democrats misjudged him as an amiable dunce. This year, the San Francisco Democrats are still in the saddle, but the country has not had a serious president in this century. Mrs Noonan continues with the kind of advice one would offer to serious people taking on a serious president.
All while Donald Trump romped.
Three thoughts. One, these aren’t serious people. Two, their job was to show they are an alternative to Mr. Trump, and instead they showed why he won. Third and most important, they will continue to lose for a long time. I hadn’t known that until Tuesday.
Sometimes a party takes a concussive blow, such as the 2024 presidential loss, and you can see: They’ll shape up and come back, they’re pros, they lost an election but not their dignity. But now and then you see: No, these guys don’t know what happened, they are going to lose over and over before they get the message.
What I saw Tuesday night is that the Democratic Party in 2025, as evinced by its leaders on Capitol Hill, is too proud and stupid to change. I saw 1981. The Reagan era had begun, the Democrats had taken quite a drubbing—a landslide loss by a sitting Democratic president, and the loss of the Senate majority they had held since 1955. It was the kind of blow that reorders the mind: Democratic policies weren’t popular! They had just been massively repudiated! But the blow didn’t reorder their minds. They kept doing the same thing, as if they had a secret death wish. They lost in another landslide in 1984, and again in ’88. Finally, as 1992 approached, they realized: We need to readjust our policy stands to be more in line with those of the American people. They did, and Bill Clinton squeaked in.
We are in “Death Wish II.”
The Democrats brought the hate. They sat stone-faced, joyless and loveless. They don’t show love for Americans anymore. They look down on them, feel distance from them, instruct them, remind them to feel bad that they’re surrounded by injustice because, well, they’re unjust.Toward the end of her column comes this advice.
Mr. Trump says: No, man, I love you.
Which is better? Which is kinder, more generous? Which inspires? Which wins?
Democrats have to understand where they are. They have completely lost their reputation as the party of the workingman. With their bad governance of the major cities and their airy, abstract obsessions with identity politics and gender ideology, they have driven away the working class, for whom life isn’t airy or abstract. Democrats must stop listening to the left of the left of their party. It tugs them too far away from the vast majority of Americans. They have been radical on the border, on crime, on boys in the girls’ locker room. They should take those issues off the table by admitting they got them wrong.
Be strategic. Mr. Trump is a man who goes too far. He confuses boldness with wildness, can’t see the line. He’ll give you opportunities. Take the big ones.One such "big one" might be the recently concluded Wisconsin Supreme Court election, in which Democrat Susan Crawford defeated Republican Brad Schimel (so much for a non-partisan bench). Both sides bought a great deal of advertising, with each half-inning of the Brewer broadcasts featuring advertisements from one, perhaps both, sides. The Republican messaging sounded all the talking points for the base, but probably came off as off-putting to conventional Republicans or swing voters. "Liberal lunatic" and "Soros money" might be cathartic, but perhaps those conventional voters might be more inclined to believe you if you didn't shout so much.
[T]he last time the Lady Huskies came within sniffing distance of the big dance, it was in the spring of 2017, and Toledo overcame (does this sound familiar) a ten point deficit in the fourth quarter to win the Mid-American tournament. Kathi Bennett recruited Kelly Smith, Mikayla Voigt, and Courtney Woods, and they were better suited to a faster tempo game than any Bennett coached team would ever display, and they were pretty good in the classroom as well.The last of the Kathi Bennett recruits graduated at the end of the 2019-2020 season, during which several promising young recruits got a good deal of playing time. Between the corona shutdowns and injuries, those players got a participation trophy to shine up in 2023. "Northern Illinois University's women's basketball team got off to a good start last November, and despite reverting to their usual form during conference play received an invitation to a tournament held at Transylvania University in Kentucky, where they lost three games." The athletics department have a little pride left: there was never a banner raised in the arena calling attention to that tournament.
On the morning after the election, I walked up the staircase of my school. A preteen was crying into the shoulders of her braces-clad peer. Her friend was rubbing circles on her back.The author is Naomi Beinart, junior at a high school not otherwise specified, relationship to any of journalism's Beinarts not specified.
I continued up the stairs to the lounge, where upperclassmen linger before classes. There I saw two tables: One was filled with my girlfriends, many of them with hollows under their eyes. There was a blanket of despair over the young women in the room. I looked over to the other table of teenage boys and saw Minecraft on their computers. While we were gasping for a breath, it seemed they were breathing freely.
One day last week, with her team, the Connecticut Sun, in a first-round playoff series against WNBA star Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever, guard DiJonai Carrington was surrounded by a group of reporters. Carrington had swatted Clark in the face while reaching for the ball in the previous game, leaving her with a black eye.Good grief. That sounds like your typical campus struggle session, with the reporter taking the place of the professor, and the players' union taking the place of the student protest community du jour, right down to the accusations of thought crimes, the "hide behind your tenure," and the accused reporter pointing to her civil rights bona fides, which might or might not justify the fact-checking she was engaging in.
USA Today columnist Christine Brennan had a question: Did you do that on purpose?
Brennan followed up: Were you laughing about it later in the game?
“I just told you I didn’t even know I hit her,” Carrington said.
The exchange came at a thrilling but tense moment for the league, which has long been powered by women of color but has seen its recent success largely attributed to Clark. The attention on the league has never been greater, but players during the series were subject to upticks in online harassment, and security was added at Connecticut’s home arena.
It was with this backdrop that the questions didn’t sit well in the Connecticut locker room, and a few minutes later, the Sun’s DeWanna Bonner confronted Brennan.
Brennan repeatedly tried to introduce herself and explain what she said as Bonner implored the columnist to treat her teammates like humans. After nearly two minutes of mostly talking past each other, Bonner returned to the locker room. (Brennan confirmed the confrontation to The Washington Post.)
Brennan, who is working on a book about Clark and routinely appears on TV, approached the other reporters and remarked that something like that wouldn’t happen in the NFL. She asked why the WNBA was so sensitive and told multiple reporters that if anyone had questions about her awareness of the racial dynamics at play, they should read her coverage of former NFL quarterback and activist Colin Kaepernick, among other work stretching back decades. (Brennan is White; Carrington is Black.)
Three days later, the Women’s National Basketball Players Association issued a statement calling for the league to revoke the credential of Brennan, one of the most recognizable sports journalists in the country.
“To unprofessional members of the media like Christine Brennan: You are not fooling anyone. That so-called interview in the name of journalism was a blatant attempt to bait a professional athlete into participating into a narrative that is false and designed to fuel racist, homophobic, and misogynistic vitriol on social media. You cannot hide behind your tenure,” the statement read. It added: “You have abused your privileges and do not deserve the credentials issued to you.”
Women in sports continue to push new boundaries and inspire us all.
— President Biden (@POTUS) April 16, 2024
But right now we're seeing that even if you're the best, women are not paid their fair share.
It’s time that we give our daughters the same opportunities as our sons and ensure women are paid what they deserve.
Like clockwork, Joe Biden has jumped on the bandwagon of those criticizing Caitlin Clark's rookie WNBA contract. Also like clockwork, Biden used the same worn-out Democrat Party talking points we've heard for decades as the basis of his predictably hollow argument.That contract scale? Sorry, it was not worked out in Calvin's Get Rid Of Slimy girlS clubhouse.
Let's first revisit Clark's contract.
As we reported on Tuesday, under the 2024 WNBA rookie scale for the No. 1-4 draft picks, the league's top pick will earn a base salary of $76,535 in her first year, $78,066 the second year and $85,873 the third, with a fourth-year option of $97,582. The predictable harpies were aghast — and most had no idea what they were harping about.
Clark will earn $338,056 over four years, according to the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement.That's right, dear reader, a collective bargaining agreement, running some 350 pages. You know, just like one stipulating that a passenger train crew can time-slip the railroad for having to switch out that baggage car, or another establishing craft classifications and stipulating that the electrician, and the electrician alone, throws the switch to turn the rolling mill back on.
Under the 2024 WNBA rookie scale for the No. 1-4 draft picks, she'll earn a base salary of $76,535 for her first year, $78,066 the second year and $85,873 the third, with a fourth-year option of $97,582.
A season, that left many filled with joy, excitement, and surprise, ended in such an abrupt way, that many fans, me included, felt sad, angry, and disappointed.Yes, and it's familiar. Here is Vince Lombardi, during training camp in July of 1967, as chronicled by guard Jerry Kramer in Instant Replay. "Take an education, but don't dwell on it. Don't let it affect your play. You will drop passes. You will make mistakes. But not very many if you want to play for the Green Bay Packers."
There’s no doubt, that 2023 was an odd year – many ups, downs, twists, and turns.
Expectations were set low, and, let’s be honest, until Thanksgiving, this team looked dead in the water, until they clearly began to swim again.
Fast forward to this week, and the now sad, angry, and disappointment is met with higher expectations, and on Wednesday, head coach Matt Lafleur made sure to make a statement.
Goodbye, defensive coordinator Joe Barry.
Goodbye strength and conditioning coach, Chris Gizzi, and hello kicking competition already with the signing of a new kicker less than a week after rookie Anders Carlson missed a key try in the team’s three-point defeat.
Many have said LaFleur has always been unable to make the big decisions, that he’s been unable to make bold moves after letdown after letdown, but these are issues that have plagued his teams, and instead of preaching for “continuity,” instead of standing pat, he decided to do something about it and put his foot down to let his young team he means business going forward.
It may seem like an easy choice, but Barry was still under contract with the organization. Players seemed to want to play for “JB”, but LaFleur saw the outcome on the field, he knew it was under-performing, and he decided to make a move knowing this team could be something special in the years to come.
The message is simple – You don’t perform, you don’t belong here. It’s a strong message to the league’s youngest team.
