‘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.
How we doing, folks? Let’s start this week — and this month — with a quick pulse check.
Halloween is behind us. October is, sadly, behind us. We fell back yesterday morning. We’re now less than 24 hours out from the midterms.
Down here in Florida, it literally has not stopped raining since Saturday night. I’ve lived through dozens of hurricanes and millions of summer storms in my 30 years in the Sunshine State, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this.
Just constant rain. Every road is flooded. My yard and the lake behind me are indistinguishable at this point. I have to use four-wheel drive to get down my dirt road, and even then, it’s dicey.
As for tomorrow’s election …
So far today — and it’s noon at the time of this writing — I’ve received 14 different texts and three calls. Some folks think Florida is turning blue. Others think we’ll have this thing wrapped up by dinnertime.
My official prediction, as OutKick’s unofficial Florida guy: We’ll stay red, but it won’t be the landslide we’ve grown accustomed to. On a concerned scale of 1-10, I’m around a 4.6 right now.
I was 0 in 2024, and 2 in 2022 for reference.
Anyway, let’s talk sports for a bit and leave all that other nonsense behind.
Welcome to a Monday Nightcaps — the one where LPGA star Charley Hull starts Thanksgiving month on a boat in Ibiza. What a life!
What else? I’ve got the worst sack attempt you’ll ever see out of Miami yesterday, a very clear attendance problem brewing in college football and wait till you see the … reception … the WNBA champs got in Golden State last night.
I know I know — I said Friday I was done talking about anything non-Sophie Cunningham in the WNBA, but this is incredible. It’s worth breaking the rule.
Trust me.
OK, grab you a sandwich for tomorrow’s National Sandwich Day, and settle in for a Monday ‘Cap!
Here’s some free advice … don’t overlook Panera in the sandwich game. That’s right.
Panera.
PANERA BREAD GRABS TOP HONORS FOR AMERICA’S HIGHEST-RATED FAST-FOOD BREAKFAST ITEM
After two days of rain, I needed to get out of the house today. I couldn’t take it anymore. So, I hopped in my boat and drove down the street to the Panera to work. I come here once in a while, mainly because the WiFi is better than most and I can get a cup of coffee for $2.
Anyway, I’ve dabbled in lunch a few times over the past few months, and I gotta say — Panera sandwiches are top shelf. People like to give Panera crap for being too pricey or too corporate, and I usually agree with that crowd. But not here. They have a new French Ciabatta Dipper out right now that’ll blow your mind.
Not an ad, by the way (although I wouldn’t mind if it was). Just figured I’d help everyone out on this first Monday of November.
Good? Good!
Now, let’s get this week started with Miami Dolphins rookie corner Chris Johnson whiffing on a sack so badly yesterday, I thought my TV glitched.
Seriously:
Goodness gracious. I’ve watched it 50 times and I still can’t believe it’s real. Heck, I watched it LIVE and seriously thought I was missing something. I saw him come around the end unblocked, and thought Drake Maye was about to die.
At worst, it was going to be a sack. At best, I figured it’d be a strip-sack going the other way for a Dolphins touchdown. There was no scenario in which Johnson … missed. Amazing.
Now, to be fair, he’s a rookie. He’s also had a really good season, including a great play later in the drive that should’ve been fourth down stop, but the refs stink so they ruled it a first down. It wasn’t, but that’s neither here nor there.
Regardless, it was an all-time whiff. I’ve watched football for 30 years. I don’t recall seeing a whiff quite like that.
Dolphins football in 2026, I reckon. Tank on!
Next? I’ve said all year that I think college football has been a superior product to the NFL this season, and I still believe that. This upcoming Saturday is shaping up to be the greatest Saturday slate of all time.
BUT … as my old boss once told the entire company at a Christmas town hall before laying off half the office six months later, “I see some storm clouds on the horizon.”
Holy cow. I’m not going to share every post from that thread because I don’t want to bog us down, but my goodness, it’s ugly.
Some of those empty stadiums are completely understandable. Maryland, for instance. The Terps stink, they just fired their coach, and they have no business being in the Big Ten. I get that one. Why in the world would anyone go to a Maryland game?
But, it wasn’t just the bad teams …
LOOK at the crowd for an actual ranked matchup between Texas Tech and Arizona:
Or, for PENN STATE:
Lordy. As I usually do on a Monday, I’d like to open this up for debate. What do you think is going on with college football attendance? TV ratings are good. The product on the field has been good. What’s the deal?
Me? I think the regular season has been watered down because of the playoffs, and I think — above all — folks have no real connection to these players anymore. These big programs don’t have any more homegrown talent. It’s all transfer portal kids. And they’re all richer than most fans in attendance.
The connection has been lost, and that connection is what made college football so great.
Let me know! Zach.Dean@OutKick.com.
OK, on the way out, let’s all congratulate the WNBA champion Golden State Valkyries!
I mean, it’s just the perfect way to put a bow on this WNBA season. Listen to that crowd! They genuinely could not care less if they tried. Even the insufferable PA announcer is BEGGING them to get louder, and it’s pointless.
What a moment. What a season.
OK, that’s it for today. Good start to the week, folks. Good start to the month. Let’s all suffer through these next 48 hours together, and put this election in the rearview.
On the way out, here’s Charley Hull dumping out some SI Swimsuit content from a boat in Ibiza.
Let’s have a big week.