Posts by Jon Dolan

  • Kim Jong-un: North Korea’s ‘Great Successor,’ Sports Fan

    You wouldn’t want to party with him, but at least the Grim Reaper has a sense of irony. Not 24 hours after the death of Czech dissident-turned-president Vaclav Havel, possibly the greatest anti-Communist revolutionary of the 20th century, we learned North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, the last Stalinist standing, had reached his final (iron) […]

  • Kellen Moore

    Which Minor Bowl Game Are You Most Excited About? (And Other College Football Questions)

    With bowl season upon us, Michael Weinreb and Jon Dolan reflected on the past year in college football, discussed their favorite minor bowls this year, and looked ahead … to 2026.

  • Minnesota Basketball: Waiting for Tubby

    One of my top five opening lines in a novel belongs to Samuel Beckett’s darkly comic dagger-turn of a debut, Murphy: “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.” Don’t that just sum about 78.4 percent of it up? It certainly does if the “it” in question was the game I watched Tuesday […]

  • Tom Osborne

    Adventures in Revisionist History: Big Ten Edition

    If you love football and hate reality, then make sure to tune into the Big Ten Network tonight at 9 Eastern for the latest installment in its Icons series. Tonight’s Icon is legendary Nebraska Cornhuskers coach Tom Osborne. It promises to be a fascinating appreciation of a gridiron legend who built a mighty program and […]

  • Beavis and Butt-Head Recap: Back on the Couch

    Ya know, I gotta say — and I don’t want to sound petty here at all — but it’s really nice to see how some people can keep up their looks after all these years. With these ’90s nostalgia reunion things you usually take what you can get: The guys are balding or they’re trying […]

  • Unkool Thing: Notes on the Split of Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore

    Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! The news on Friday night that Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore had split up after 27 years of marriage was for indie rock fans like having a rock thrown through your bedroom window. The coolness and longevity of their relationship — and the band it foregrounded — was a natural fact and easily one […]

  • Occupy Wall Street

    Radiohead Cancels, Jeff Mangum Surfaces

    Radiohead didn’t show up to play the Occupy Wall Street protests, as was rumored late last week. But Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel did. It’s a little like expecting the 82nd Airborne Division and getting the Luxembourg Navy, and that makes it all the more fitting. The protests will likely end up a lot […]

  • R.E.M.

    Thanks, R.E.M.

    Looking back on 31 years, 15 albums, and a band like no other.