‘Nightcaps’ is a daily column that catches you up on the biggest sports, news, and culture stories you may have missed while pretending to do work at your desk. It runs Monday-Friday on OutKick.com.
Over the hump and safely into another big week(end) of football. And baseball! Sure, Rays-Brewers ain’t exactly Mets-Yankees from 2000, but the Fall Classic is still the Fall Classic.
Lord knows it’s better than the whatever it is they’re doing in the WNBA at the moment. Thank goodness that season is just about over. Goodness, it’ll be nice when the curtains close on that league here in a few days.
It’ll be smooth sailing after that! Just football, baseball, hockey and the NBA … if you so choose. Beautiful time of year.
Let’s roll.
Welcome to a Thursday Nightcaps — the one where LPGA star Charley Hull throws her bikini in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit ring for the first time.
That’s right. We’ve got a new rookie on this year’s roster, and she’s a modern-day Andrew Luck in terms of hype. What a steal for SI. Well done.
What else? I’ve got Pat McAfee’s first ESPN alt-cast of a Monday night game going terribly, the big-wigs over at NASCAR HQ experiencing a similar situation, and we’ve got more national anthem drama … somehow.
The president has even weighed in this time! I’ll be honest with you, I have national anthem drama fatigue. I’m just over it. I don’t care anymore.
Beyond the obvious disgust, do you guys care anymore? I’m curious.
OK, grab you your favorite horror movie in anticipation of tomorrow’s National Horror Movie Day, and settle in for a Thursday ‘Cap!
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Those of you who have been in this class since the beginning (nearly five years now!) know that I’m a horror movie buff. I love that stuff. I grew up watching scary movies with my mom.
In fact, she accidentally took me to a screening of Rob Zombie’s Halloween II as a teenager, and the whole movie basically just turned out to be a bunch of sex scenes. We didn’t talk for two days.
Anyway, I maintain that Halloween is the greatest horror movie of all time. It’s certainly the best slasher movie out there. The theme song. The suspense. The ridiculous sequels and spin-offs. It’s just perfect. The entire franchise is great, except the most recent movie, which was trash.
Mount Rushmore of Halloween movies? Sure, why not?!
Honorable mentions: Halloween 6 (Paul Rudd’s debut!) and the first Halloween of the most recent reboot trilogy. The other two STUNK.
And that concludes the cinema portion of today’s class. You’re welcome!
OK, let’s get this thing started with someone who is the opposite of scary: LPGA star, Charley Hull!
Turns out, our girl is dipping her toe into the SI Swimsuit waters:
From Sports Illustrated:
Professional golfer Charley Hull will make her SI Swimsuit debut in the 2027 issue. After turning pro in 2013, Hull quickly became the youngest player to ever represent Europe in the Solheim Cup at the age of 17. Now 30, the English golfer is a three-time LPGA Tour winner who reached her career high of No. 3 in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings in February 2026.
Welcome to the show, Charley Hull! OutKick has been following Hull since the beginning, so it’s good to see her getting the credit she deserves.
She may be European, but make no mistake about it … she’s a patriot.
Check out what she said to Joe Kinsey last month about Sydney Sweeney’s gambling ad that sent the left into a death spiral:
“The amount of backlash that (it) is getting, I just don’t understand the way people’s brains work. They’re making a big deal out of nothing. It’s an actress slash model modeling for an advert. And I think she owns the company as well.”
Yep. I think she’ll do just fine in her new endeavor.
Worse comes to worst, she’ll certainly do better than Pat McAfee’s alt-broadcast of Monday Night Football earlier this week:
So, here’s the thing …
A lot of folks say those embarrassing ratings are a sign that fans have “Pat McAfee fatigue.” I disagree.
I think we have “alt-broadcast fatigue.” WHY do we need multiple broadcasts of a game? I don’t get it. You go to watch a college football game on ESPN nowadays, and you accidentally end up watching the “Skycast” view, which is just an announcer-less view of the game from a camera above the action. That’s it.
WHY do we need that?!
Why do we need an “alt-cast”? Just give us the stupid game on the stupid channel and leave us alone. We don’t need to hear what another group of analysts thinks of the game. We don’t need to watch the game from their sideline perspective. We don’t need a “Next-Gen” broadcast of all the stats nobody cares about.
Just let us watch the game! It ain’t McAfee fatigue. It’s streaming fatigue. That’s it.
Don’t believe me? Ask NASCAR!
Look at that number! Do you understand how bad that is? Sunday’s NASCAR playoff race at Phoenix drew just 1.2 million viewers. That’s unfathomably bad.
I wrote about it this morning and really got into the weeds. I won’t do that here because we all have better things to do, but feel free to dive in.
Bottom line? NASCAR’s top series has been on network TV all of seven times this year. Seven. That means the other 26 races have been on either cable, or streaming. That ain’t gonna work.
Again, folks are tired of the extra nonsense. We’ve gone too far with streaming and alt-broadcasts. Simpler is better. NASCAR is now learning that the hard way.
Finally, on the way out, let’s check in on the latest national anthem scandal on the hardwood:
I’d like to leave the class with a question today …
Are y’all over the anthem stuff? I don’t mean that in a bad way. I’m not saying it’s not ridiculous behavior, because it is.
But do we really care how LeBron James acts before games? Is it really worth getting upset over LEBRON JAMES in 2026? Or at the insufferable WNBA girls? We know who they are. We know what they believe, and how they act.
Why do we care anymore? They’re all gaslighters. They’re all virtue-signalers. They’re all insufferable.
At this point, I’d prefer just treat them as such and ignore the nonsense.
How do you feel? Let me know!
See you tomorrow.
Zach.Dean@OutKick.com