Free Republic

The SEC takes football a little bit more seriously than the rest of the country. Let Connor Bruce Croll serve as an example. The 19-year-old Alabama freshman has been arrested, accused of calling in a threat to LSU’s Tiger Stadium during its Saturday night showdown against the Florida Gators, the Tuscaloosa News reports. The nature of the alleged threat hasn’t been disclosed. But if the allegations are true, then this die-hard Crimson Tide fan went to extreme measures to disrupt a game between two of Alabama’s biggest rivals.

The “lazy river” at Louisiana State University is often held up as an example of wasteful non-academic university spending, a frivolity intended to attract students who aren’t the studying type or who simply pay higher tuition. But it’s also siphoning away money from core academic maintenance, as suggested by a CBS News report on how universities use “lavish perks” to entice students. When “CBS This Morning” co-host Tony Dokoupil visited the taxpayer-funded university, he noted some of the library building “was literally falling apart,” plus water in the basement and “rugs from another generation.”

Russia has stationed troops between the Syrian army and Turkish forces in an attempt to prevent fresh clashes in northern Syria. Moscow said its soldiers are now patrolling land outside the flashpoint city of Manbij, which was taken over by Syrian government forces on Tuesday, to prevent an anticipated Turkish attack. Russia, which backs the Syrian government, said 'no one is interested' in fighting between Syrian government troops and Turkish forces and that Moscow 'is not going to allow it.'

Link

England's black players who were targeted with vile racist abuse tonight silenced Bulgarian fans with a 6-0 rout in a game which was halted twice by the referee because of the chants. Marcus Rashford and Raheem Sterling scored while Tyrone Mings enjoyed a fine debut in defence, despite all three being the subject of jeering, monkey chants and Nazi salutes from the home fans. After the Bulgarian FA rubbishing Gareth Southgate's concerns about racism before the Euro 2020 qualifier tonight, it took only 30 minutes for official Ivan Bebel to stop the game after being alerted by Mings about the...

Prominent Democratic donors and groups have pushed more than $13 million into Virginia in an attempt to oust Republican politicians from the control of the legislature. Virginia, one of four states that have legislative elections in November, has been viewed as a pivotal state to recapture power by the nation's most prominent liberal donors and organizations. Those outside players are injecting large swaths of cash into Virginia in hopes of flipping the legislature. Republicans currently possess a one-seat advantage in the state's 40-seat Senate and a 3-seat majority in its 100-member House of Delegates. The state was identified by the...

It may appear Hillary and Chelsea Clinton always see eye-to-eye, but in a recent interview one topic cracked the facade of the like-minded mother-daughter power duo. The one issue Hillary and Chelsea don't appear to agree on entirely is transgender self-identification. In an interview with The Sunday Times, journalist Decca Aitkenhead asked the Clintons if someone with a beard and a penis can ever be a woman, to which Chelsea replied emphatically, 'Yes.' However, as Aitkenhead describes it, Hillary looked 'uneasy', and blamed generational gaps for being less accepting. 'Errr. I'm just learning about this,' Hillary responded. 'It's a very...

Economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize for creating an experimental approach to alleviating global poverty, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Monday. “This year’s Laureates have introduced a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty,” the academy said in statement.

Until Saturday, the list of legitimate national title contenders in college football fit in a neat box. There was Alabama, Georgia and LSU in the SEC. Clemson from the ACC, Ohio State from the Big Ten and Oklahoma from the Big 12 were mixed among them. Sure, there were arguments and outliers for other programs and leagues. But as the season passed its halfway point, there were really only compelling cases for six programs to be hoisting the crystal ball in mid-January. On Saturday, Georgia took a stunning exit that forced us to re-examine the legitimacy of the remaining dozen...

Students at Michigan State University are getting an education in how they can avoid offending people with culturally inappropriate Halloween costumes in what’s becoming a new tradition that undermines the university’s own identity. The unsolicited advice on what to wear on fright night appeared on message boards in campus residences this week to help students answer the question “Is your Halloween costume racist?” according to The Morning Watch, the school’s conservative news site. What’s become an annual reminder from MSU’s Residence Education and Housing Services spells out the difference between “cultural appropriation vs. appreciation.” When students are selecting a Halloween...

The competition has been stiff and there are still hours to go before close of business but I feel like this guy has already clinched the distinction of NBA China Cuck of the Week. Congrats to the Warriors on their first title of 2019.

Protesters interrupted the CNN LGBTQ town hall on Thursday to highlight the plight of black transgender women, at one point taking the mic from a questioner. Advocates tracked the deaths of at least 26 transgender people in the US in 2018, according to the Human Rights Campaign. In 2019, at least 19 transgender people have been fatally shot or killed, according to HRC.

Here’s the complete Week 7 college football schedule with dates, matches, locations, kickoff times and TV channels.

Treasure hunters have struck gold while diving a wreck thought to have sunk with tens of millions of dollars worth of currency. The Steamship North Carolina, a 200ft long side wheel steamer, sank on July 25, 1840, after colliding with her sister ship, the Governor Dudley, 20 miles off the South Carolina coast. And while all passengers and crew were able to escape from one ship to the other, their cargo was lost – including a hoard of gold coins.

Link

In an unusual move, the Swedish Academy doled out Nobel Prizes in literature to two authors on Thursday: Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, who won the postponed 2018 award, and Austrian author Peter Handke, who won the prize for this year. The academy's permanent secretary, Mats Malm, announced the winners at a press briefing in Stockholm. Tokarczuk, 57, was recognized "for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life," according to the judges' citation, released Thursday. And judges said Handke, 76, won "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored...

Classes were canceled. Frozen foods melted. Hospitals switched to emergency generators. Blooms withered in florists’ coolers. Unused food was jettisoned at shuttered restaurants. Lines formed at gas stations. Cellphones faded out. That’s what happened Wednesday when the state’s largest utility shut off power to millions of Californians in a drastic attempt to avoid the killer wildfires that have charred hundreds of thousands of acres, caused billions of dollars in damage and spurred cries for widespread change in how electricity is delivered over the state’s aging grid.

Young people are spearheading mental health awareness at the workplace. About half of millennials and 75 percent of Gen Zers have quit their jobs for mental health reasons, according to a new study conducted by Mind Shares Partners, SAP and Quatrics. It was published in Harvard Business Review.

Lincoln Riley found a way to handle the Horns Down controversy that has lingered in the Big 12. Asked Monday how he'll address the issue with his team for Saturday's Red River Showdown between No. 6 Oklahoma and No. 11 Texas at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Riley simply said, "Our players won't do it."

Most of the time, when a sports story becomes mainstream, those that cover sports look at it as an opportunity. It's a chance to be critical and step outside of sticking to sports. But the latest story to intertwine between sports and politics could be their worst nightmare. That is because it involves the one thing the new media has declared untouchable: the NBA. The Daryl Morey-China situation has really ruined things for the media and their narrative. This is a league that most media members under 45 - though, plenty over it too - say is much better than...