Former college football writer (UK, FSU, Alabama). @UK_Patterson alum. Also, I eat donuts. Personal account; views are mine alone.

Joined April 2009
1,236 Photos and videos
Ben Jones retweeted
Re: the proposed GWOT memorial—it's very strange seeing some (quite online) vets citing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as some sort of lodestar of tradition. A lot of Vietnam vets hated the memorial wall with the names of the dead. Jim Webb called it "a nihilistic slab of stone."
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Ben Jones retweeted
WHAT THE HELL WOW
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Next time, you might just link to the article rather than copying and pasting someone else's work. postandcourier.com/education…
Clemson is $1.5B in debt. Syracuse is closing or pausing 93 programs, UNC-Chapel Hill plans to cut spending by $89M over 3 years. Duke recently let 600 employees go in a $350M budget cut. Indiana public colleges announced a plan to eliminate or merge 580 programs statewide.
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Ben Jones retweeted
Nike spent ten years trying to break the 2-hour marathon. They named a project after it. They built special shoes. They paid the greatest marathoner alive to chase it. Yesterday, a Kenyan runner finally did it in 1:59:30, wearing Adidas. Sabastian Sawe used to be a pacemaker. A pacemaker is the kind of runner you hire to set the speed for the first few miles of a race and then drop out before the finish. In January 2022, Sawe got booked to do exactly that at a half-marathon in Spain. He'd never raced more than three miles in his life. He stayed in for the full 13 and won the whole thing. Adidas signed him not long after. Four years later, he became the first human ever to run an official marathon under 2 hours. Nike, meanwhile, started this whole project in 2016 with a public goal called "Breaking2." They paid for the shoes, the pacemakers, the science labs, and Eliud Kipchoge himself. Kipchoge ran 1:59:40 in Vienna in 2019, but the event was a closed-course exhibition with rotating pacemakers and a pace car projecting a green laser line onto the road. The sport's governing body never recognized it as a real race. It didn't count. Then Nike's running business cratered. Digital sales fell 26% in one quarter. Their share of footwear sold at Dick's Sporting Goods went from 39% to 32% in five months. On Running grew from $330 million to $1.8 billion between 2020 and 2025. Hoka nearly quadrupled. Roger Federer left Nike for On. Nike's board fired the CEO in October 2024. Adidas spent the same period building a better shoe. The new Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 took three years to develop. It weighs 97 grams, about 3.4 ounces, lighter than a deck of cards. A Wall Street Journal-cited study found that wearing a shoe 3.5 ounces lighter saves a runner around 57 seconds across a marathon. Sawe beat the third-place finisher by 58 seconds. Adidas also did something Nike never did for Kipchoge. They wrote a $50,000 check to the official anti-doping body for track and field, asking it to test Sawe more aggressively than any other runner alive. He got tested 25 times in the two months before last year's Berlin Marathon, and Adidas signed up to fund this for the length of his contract. The logic: the moment Sawe ran a marathon this fast, the world was going to ask if he cheated, especially after his countrywoman Ruth Chepngetich got a 3-year doping ban in 2025. Adidas got out ahead of it. The shoe retails at $500 and is barely available. Adidas's Adizero shoes won half of all major marathon races in 2024. Yesterday in London, four of the top five finishers wore the same Adidas shoe. Yomif Kejelcha crossed the line 11 seconds after Sawe and also broke 2 hours. The top three runners all beat the previous world record. Nike's only response was an Instagram post. Three sentences long: "The clock has been reset. There is no finish line." That was their entire public reaction to losing a 10-year moonshot to their biggest rival.
Apr 26
1:59:30. Humanity just got faster. Powered by Adizero. #YouGotThis
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Ben Jones retweeted
The Hilton donated the ~2600 dinners that went unserved at WHCD. They freeze dried the steak and lobster for longer shelf life before giving them to 2 shelters for abused women and children. HUGE thank you to the staff that worked through the night under terrible circumstances.
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Some dedicated soul is updating Chuck Grassley's Wikipedia page EVERY DAY so we know how old he is. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_…
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I don't know who needs to hear this but hot honey doesn't need to be on every pizza. Just regular pepperoni is still great.
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Ben Jones retweeted
Kirk Cousins agent
If aliens visit us, who should be in charge of speaking on behalf of humanity?
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Respectfully, the military buildup took weeks and weeks. For an analyst to not even think about this possibility is... neglectful.
“In the whole written history of the strait, it has never been closed, ever,” said JPMorgan Chase analyst Natasha Kaneva. “To me, it was not just the worst-case scenario. It was an unthinkable scenario.”
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Ben Jones retweeted
Watching full blown global conflicts on Twitter is the craziest experience of modern life. War, war, Alabama lands 5 star, F1, Auburn Loss, Epstein, war, Georgia player arrested, missiles.
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Subject to the requirements of the service.
Today Feb 27th Onboard the HMAS Sydney I was presented with the honorary rank of Commander in the Royal Australian Navy. Here I am with Vice Admiral Hammond and Lord Blakeney ( Max Pirkis ). I served with Lord Blakeney on the HMS Surprise back in 1805. Once Navy, Always Navy.
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Ben Jones retweeted
A wholesome offseason adventure in Japan for #AZCardinals defensive lineman L.J. Collier and Dalvin Tomlinson.
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Might only interest me, but if Steelers DL Cam Heyward were to retire, he could join a rare group of players to make the Hall of Fame spending their entire career with 1 head coach. Only other current NFL player with a good shot is probably Travis Kelce.
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Happy to have someone check me here but I believe the most recent players to accomplish this are Terrell Davis (Broncos/Mike Shanahan, 1995-2001) and Tim Duncan (Spurs/Gregg Popovich, 1997-2016). Chipper Jones (Braves) was close to pulling it off with Bobby Cox. Truly rare.
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These are the only 3 MLB players I can find who accomplished this. Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax (Dodgers/Walter Alston) Ross Youngs (Giants/John McGraw)
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Ben Jones retweeted
$4 in store credit
A video game collector has completed the entire Xbox 360 game library after 20 years He estimates it cost around $20,000 and includes 1,353 titles
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It always looks better on the model than when you try it on.
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28 Dec 2025
Fix the shipyards. Build more submarines.
Le destroyer de classe Type 055 « Wuxi » (numéro de coque 104) a mené avec succès les essais de qualification du missile antinavire hypersonique YJ‑20.
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23 Dec 2025
I am 36 years old, and have seen enough data to believe that I am getting worse at wrapping presents as I get older.
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