Hi, this is Josh Levine, and this is Slate Sports Podcast, hang up and listen for the week of

September 2, 2014. On this week's show, we'll talk about the start of the college football season

and what the proliferation of neutral-site games in NFL stadiums means for the future of the sport.

We'll also be joined by ESPN's Don Van Nata,

who'll discuss his profile of Dallas Cowboys owner, president, general manager, and frequent

private jet user Jerry Jones. And Sports Illustrated's Courtney Wen will be here to discuss

the first week of the U.S. Open, the upsets there're in, the state of Roger Federer, and how American

tennis players are getting tired of talking about the sorry state of American tennis.

And in our bonus segment for Slate Plus members, we'll talk about the Rams decision to cut

Michael Sam to keep him off their practice squad and ESPN's report on Sam's showering habits.

Joining me in Washington, D.C., Stefan Fatsis, frequent showerer, the author of the book's Word Freak, and a few seconds of panic. The Friday sports correspondent friend Piers all things considered. Hello, Stefan. I didn't know Roger Federer has his own state now. He is so powerful. It's the most elegant state in all the land.

It's a little bit of a boring state, but really the best, by all measures. Only the finest. People mock the state. Hey, it's Mike Pesca. He's what in New York? What state is like that do you think? Probably Connecticut, right? Like, not a sexy state that people want to move to, but, you know, really has a lot of good things about it. I made Connecticut State Sport and that 50 States 50 Sports map squash. So I think... So, yeah, definitely. There you go. Trinity College. Yeah. Could have been High-Lie. Did any state have High-Lie? Florida had High-Lie. Oh, okay, because I thought that maybe, obviously, Florida, I mean, sorry, High-Lay is more associated with Florida, but I thought Florida might have, you know, tarpen fishing or something else.

No, the thinking was that Highlie is a weird sport and Florida is a weird state. So it's like the peanut butter and chocolate. There are two states that have lived with Big Glass Highland. The thinking also is that unless you've driven past Exit 35 on 995, you're really not. You don't associate Connecticut with Highland.

Oh, you demean the big Basque population of the town of New Brach.

Anyway, you're the host of The Gist with Mike Pesca.

Let's start the show.

The first season of college football's playoff era began last week with a couple of games on campus sites. Texas A&M routed South Carolina

in Columbia. Georgia knocked off Clemson in Athens. But the biggest games of the week were at neutral

sites with number one Florida State beating Oklahoma State in the Cowboys AT&T Stadium. Number two, Alabama

beat West Virginia in the Falcons home stadium, the Georgia Dome, at LSUB

Wisconsin and the Houston Texans Reliant Stadium.

So this obviously shows that college football, big business, it kind of reveals more than

...