AFP Podcasts

Something is going on down at Virginia Tech, where the school’s president, Tim Sands, announced to Hokie Nation on Thursday, in a shock move, that he will be stepping down in the coming months. And it took a sports guy – not me – to figure it out.

TNA President Carlos Silva, obviously getting marching orders from big brother WWE, has forced Nic Nemeth, the former Dolph Ziggler, out of a May 1 indy match with AEW champ MJF, citing “partner conflicts.” Uh, huh.

Abigail Spanberger isn’t polling well right now, but I think I’ve got the solution. No, not better policies. I mean, a big part of the problem is that she’s not doing well with Democrats and independents, because she’s governing like a center-right Republican. We don’t fix bad poll numbers these days by course corrections. The solution: bombs.

Iran got Donald Trump to agree to a two-week ceasefire in which the Iranians basically give up nothing, and actually secured the right to charge tolls on ships navigating the Strait of Hormuz – and Ben Cline thinks this is “a beautiful thing.”

ESPN.com college basketball scribe Jeff Borzello has his “Way-Too-Early Top 25” for next season out this morning, and has Virginia at #9.

Donald Trump, not at all off his rocker, is, today, threatening Iran with total genocide. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump posted on his Truth Social account, timestamp: 8:06 a.m. Tuesday. Deadline, per the post: “tonight.” Unless, from Trump, “different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail.”

The AWARE Foundation is highlighting the cold case of James Davis Walker, who was last seen on April 7, 2000, in the Food Lion parking lot on Longwood Avenue in Bedford. Walker, known to friends and family as Slim – he was 6’7”, 140 pounds, at the time of his disappearance, at the age of 53 – may have been the victim of foul play, according to authorities.

A school bus driver in Lynchburg allegedly assaulted a student and has been arrested and charged with strangulation and child neglect.

UVA Basketball alum Jenny Boucek would obviously be somebody whose agent you’d want to contact about the coaching vacancy in the UVA women’s hoops program.

First-team All-ACC guard Kymora Johnson is entering the transfer portal, and there is one possible, quite logical, landing spot for her – on the roster of legendary UVA point guard Dawn Staley down at South Carolina.

Rugby is American football, without pads and helmets, and without mass substitutions – and if you’re bleeding after a hit, nothing to it, ’tis but a scratch. “I hate being pulled out, even just to catch my breath. I want to be out there for the full 80 minutes,” said Perry Allen, a member of the Virginia Rugby Football Club, which will host the Virginia Beach Falcons on Saturday at VFW Post 1827 in Charlottesville in the first round of the Division 3 playoffs. Significant others, prospective players, no worries – it’s safe. More on that as we dive into the sport.

To the UVA Basketball fans who thought they wanted Will Wade over Ryan Odom, and you know who you are, Wade not only already lost his way out of his first NCAA Tournament at NC State, with last night’s last-second defeat in the First Four, but he’s also a loser.

I’ll be heading to Philly on Thursday to cover the first weekend of the 2026 NCAA Tournament, with a focus on #9 Virginia, which opens play on Friday as the #3 seed in the Midwest Region. On the podcast, I offer insight into what we’ve learned about the first-round opponent, #14 seed Wright State, the champ of the Horizon League. I also offer a travel itinerary – I get to be a tourist, too, in between games.

Beth Macy did a sitdown with me for this week’s “Street Knowledge” podcast. Macy is a triple threat: journalist, bestselling author (Dopesick), and now, congressional candidate – running for the Democratic Party nomination in the Sixth District in Virginia. We talked at length about her work on Dopesick and her most recent book, Paper Girl, which has the hook of Macy revisiting her rural Ohio hometown to try to figure out how it went so MAGA in her years away. The conversation then shifts to the impact of NAFTA and globalization on Appalachian economies, and how the job losses factored into the opioid and heroin crises here in our part of Virginia. We wrap with a rundown of where we are politically, and Macy’s priorities if elected.