Month: December 2024

Interview – Richlandia Talks Predictions, Gator Bowl and the Portal

You all may remember, probably because Dad won’t let you forget, that he (finally) got a preseason prediction right. In the season preview episode, Dad called Duke going 9-3 and that’s exactly what the Blue Devils did. Instead of breaking down what to expect in the Gator Bowl, we talk a lot about the changing face of college football. With the losses of QB1 and QB2 to the portal, Dad and I discuss how the portal is making bowl games entirely irrelevant. While players should be able to transfer, schools can’t tell fans that bowl games matter when the calendar forces key players to transfer out prior to the end of the season.

Dad and I present differing views, to some extent, on these issues. I also make a prediction that players will unionize to protect themselves and the commitments that schools make to players. Given that the NCAA has become completely irrelevant and can’t police its member institutions, courts are going to become the enforcement mechanism for “amateur” rules that apply to the NCAA. When that happens, players will unionize to protect themselves through collective-bargaining. It’s the only thing that players can, and should, do.

I hope you enjoy this episode. It’s an unusual format for Bull City Coordinators. If you don’t like it, I blame our Richlandia correspondent and take no responsibility for it.

Please call the pod (540-632-0160), leave a message and you’ll get in an episode.

Let me know what you think about what we think in the comments, on Mastodon, on Reddit, on Instagram, Spoutible, Bluesky or on Twitter.

As always, Go Duke!

Sidequest 12 – Anthony Kaldellis on the “Byzantine Empire” and Roman Identity

In the latest episode of the Sidequest, Anthony Kaldellis, author of many books including The New Roman Empire, stops by to discuss his podcast Byzantium & Friends, how the academic community is starting to embrace podcasts as a medium to communicate with a wider audience, the narratives surrounding Antiquity, including when it “ended”, in the Western and Eastern imperial provinces and the importance of the “Byzantines” to Antiquity and the Classics. We also discuss the naming convention behind use of the term “Byzantine” and the important role the Crimean War played in that. Dr. Kaldellis wrote an article about that which I highly recommend and link to here.

One of the more interesting parts of this interview involved me learning about how widespread the Greek language was throughout the Empire. It turns out that the city of Rome had a large population that spoke Greek including one Julius Caesar. We also have a discussion about “Late Antiquity” and whether we should consider that as a transitional period which I discuss more in the intro to the podcast. I think my views on it come from the way I view things as a trial lawyer which may not entirely overlap with the way that historians approach their work. I could be way off about this. It’s just a thought I had as I edited the podcast.

Your reading assignment from this episode is “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning“.

On the opening theme music, for now it’s from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/kevin-macleod/folk-round
License code: SHTJJRTVTRXQAID1

Please call the pod (540-632-0160), leave a message and you’ll get in an episode. Let me know what you think about what we think in the comments or on Twitter.

And never forget that The Classical Antiquity Sidequest is a podcast without end.