It’s UVA-Virginia Tech football week, so I got the gang together to preview the game, and we do, eventually.

But first: why are tickets so ridiculously expensive?

Scott German joins me to rain down furious anger on the folks at UVA Athletics, who seem intent on money-grabbing us out of a big crowd for the Saturday primetime game.

Then we direct some upset at the medical staff, for allowing Kam Robinson to return to the Duke game and tear his ACL.

Dumb, just dumb stuff.

I promise that we break down the game at the end.

Leaks of internal communications between top NASCAR executives both hurt the racing series’ legal challenge from two NASCAR teams, and are also causing massive damage to the circuit in the court of public opinion.

With the trial in the antitrust lawsuit set to begin next week, Rod Mullins, the editor of Dickenson Media, joins the show to report on and break down the latest developments in the case.

Rod also updates us with the latest on the story of a Southwest Virginia football coach who has been missing for four days as his team makes its way through the Virginia high-school playoffs.

Virginia Tech has officially welcomed James Franklin to Hokie Nation. Will Franklin be the guy to get Tech Football back to where it was … 15 years ago now?

Yeah, it’s been awhile.

I had Scott German join me to discuss.

We also both give UVA Athletics administrators hell for moving the 2026 NC State home football game to Brazil.

We wrap with a lengthy love letter to Ryan Odom Basketball.

It’s actually just puppy love right now, since we’re only in the cupcake part of the schedule.

Chris Graham and Scott German get back together via podcast to review their preseason UVA Football prognostications, which, it turns out, were way off.

The guys thought 7-5 or 8-4 was possible, which at the time got them banished to the edge of the Fringe Media.

Now at 9-2, they’re on the other side – yeah, they foresaw a good season, but not this good.

Lots to chew on here, obviously.

UVA Football News

The West Virginia governor, Patrick Morrisey, and a Mountain State legislator, Chris Rose, think they see an opportunity to mooch off our prosperity.

Morrisey, last week, in the hours after our Blue Wave state elections, sent a message to the red counties in Virginia via Facebook, assuming that he feels their frustration.

“It’s about to get awful blue in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” wrote Morrisey, a Brooklyn-born, New Jersey-bred Rutgers alum who only moved to West Virginia, and Harpers Ferry – barely inside the border – at that, when he was 39 years old.

Guy is as West Virginia as Tony Soprano, with the added touch that, before he got into elected politics, he made his living as a pharmaceutical lobbyist, and now runs a state set backwards a generation by the opioid crisis that he made gobs of money advocating for.

Back to Jersey Boy’s post-election message to Virginia:

“Don’t wait for the high taxes to heavy regulations to come, now is your chance to escape to wild and wonderful West Virginia,” Morrisey wrote.

Kyle Larson snuck his way into his second NASCAR Cup Series title, winning in OT after a late wreck changed the calculus for Denny Hamlin.

And now, we have lots of questions.

Will NASCAR put the kibosh on the playoff system?

What happens in the antitrust lawsuit challenging the charter system?

There’s that, there’s the beginning, in earnest, of the silly season.

So much to break down.

The CDC tells us that one in four girls and one in 13 boys are, right know, as you read this, victims of sexual abuse – basically, let’s just call it what it is, child rape.

Do the math, and it’s not good – we’re talking about 14 million girls, 3 million boys.

Let that sink in: 17 million kids, in this country, our kids, raped.

We only know about a fraction of these cases, because 90 percent of child-rape cases involve a perpetrator who is known to the victim – a parent, close family member, family friend – who either manipulates the victim into silence, or worse, threatens or uses violence to keep the secret.

I can sense that you’re uncomfortable.

Nobody likes talking about child rape, which is a big reason why we have the problem we have.

It’s looking more and more like NASCAR is going to have to settle the suit challenging its charter system, not so much to save face, but to at least have a hand in setting the future direction of its business model.

Rod Mullins joins me to discuss the latest in the charter suit, which is playing out against a backdrop of the final race of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, the Championship 4 finale in Phoenix.

We break down how the final two drivers earned their way into the C4, and break down the chances of the Final Four – Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, William Byron and Kyle Larson.

A settlement conference in the NASCAR antitrust suit will head into a second day, after lawyers for the privately owned racing circuit and two of the sport’s top teams met in court on Tuesday to see if they could resolve their many disputes.

Rod Mullins joins the podcast to report on the latest.

We also spend some time on news from the track, with the 2025 NASCAR Playoffs down to the final two races – this weekend in our neck of the woods, down in Martinsville.

Healthcare isn’t a red or blue issue, says Pete Barlow, an Augusta County Democrat running for Congress in the 2026 midterms cycle.

Farmers having markets closed to them because of the Trump tariffs – not a red or blue issue.

FEMA not being there to respond to natural disasters – not red or blue.

But for Democrats in Western Virginia to be able to be a part of the solutions, we need to open up the tent.

“We always talk about being a big tent party. Well, let’s really be a big tent party and talk to people who we disagree with,” said Barlow, who stepped down from his job as a manager with FEMA earlier this year to throw himself full-time into his run for the Democratic Party nomination for the Sixth District seat in Congress.

Link: https://augustafreepress.com/news/pete-barlow-to-virginia-democrats-lets-be-the-big-tent-party/