AFP Podcasts

It’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff season

The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs begin this weekend, with a Sunday night race at Darlington.

Rod Mullins joins the show to help get us ready.

We also break down the 2026 NASCAR schedule, which was released last week, and talk through the latest in the lawsuit challenging the NASCAR charter system, and what it could mean for 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports.

One race left for drivers to punch NASCAR playoff ticket

Austin Dillon stole one of the remaining spots in the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs with his win at Richmond on Saturday.

Two spots remain in the final race of the regular season, coming up Saturday night at Daytona.

Rod Mullins joins us to break down the field of contenders, and bid-stealers.

We also discuss the new sponsor for the second-tier series, O’Reilly Auto Parts, which will replace Xfinity as the title sponsor in 2026.

UVA athletes are getting paid: Some people have a problem with that

I had a nice, informative – I’d like to think, to both sides – back-and-forth with an AFP reader this week, on the costs to attend the University of Virginia, and the impact that UVA Athletics does or doesn’t have on that.

The reader was responding to my recent series of articles discussing the approach that the athletics director, Carla Williams, has been taking to keep UVA Athletics competitive in the still-developing era in which college athletics finances are driven by the need to provide significant compensation for student-athletes in high-profile, money-generating sports like football and men’s basketball.

#TeamAFP was in Bristol for the 2025 MLB Speedway Classic

#TeamAFP staff writer Rod Mullins was down in Bristol this weekend – both days, as it turned out – for the 2025 MLB Speedway Classic at Bristol Motor Speedway.

The Atlanta Braves got the win, 4-2, over the Cincinnati Reds, but that was just part of what was going on at the iconic NASCAR venue.

Rod takes us in the press box and on the field to give us insight into what was going on behind the scenes.

MLB Speedway Classic preview

The Cincinnati Reds and Atlanta Braves are on their way to Bristol after the splitting the first two games of a four-game series.

Why Bristol?

Rod Mullins previews the 2025 MLB Speedway Classic, which will feature a record-breaking crowd – more than 85,000 are expected – at Bristol Motor Speedway, which has been remade into a state-of-the-art baseball stadium for a one-night-only game on Saturday.

Rod was at BMS on Thursday, and he takes us behind the scenes to get us ready for this most unique sporting event.

Mo’ money, no problem for UVA Football

If you want to know what you need to know about UVA Football, you need to follow the money.

AFP staff writer Scott German joins the podcast for our summer UVA Football preview, and most of what we do over the course of the hour is, follow the money.

Scott talked last week with the new GM for UVA Football, Tyler Jones, and the assistant GM, Justin Speros, to learn more about the massive influx of dollars into the NIL budget, and how that changed things in terms of recruiting.

UVA Athletics isn’t sorry; Abigail Spanberger needs to tell us what she’ll do

Two topics on the news podcast today:

• It has been made abundantly clear to me that UVA Athletics does not want to say anything, publicly, privately or otherwise, regarding the finding of misconduct against associate head swim coach Gary Taylor.
• I have had it up to, wherever, with Virginia Democratstelling me, several times a day, everything that Winsome Earle-Sears is doing wrong. Main issue for me here being: they never tell me what the person who I want to be governor, Abigail Spanberger, wants to do that’s right.

NASCAR charter lawsuit latest

An appeals court lifted an injunction in the antitrust suit filed by the owners of 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports against NASCAR, which could put the status of the two race teams in doubt ahead of the beginning of the trial in December.

Rod Mullins joins me for the podcast to break down the latest developments in the case/.

Rod also reports on the pending closure of the company that produces the grandfather clocks presented to winners at Cup Series races at Martinsville Speedway and the preparations for the 2025 MLB Speedway Classic.

The show wraps with a recap of Shane van Gisbergen’s win in Chicago, and a look ahead to this weekend’s action in Ponoma.

UVA President Jim Ryan resigns

UVA President Jim Ryan, whose contract was extended in 2022, before the MAGAs started gaining power on the BOV, was a goner; the only question was, how?

There was plenty to work with – the issues with leadership at UVA Health, which led to the resignation of its CEO, Craig Kent, in February; the failures on several fronts that factored into the entirely preventable shooting deaths of three UVA Football players in 2022.

Turns out, the leverage point would be DEI, with a pair of UVA alums in the Trump DOJ, Gregory Brown, the deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, and Harmeet K. Dhillon, a civil-rights lawyer in the department, leading the charge on that front.

 

Richard Petty didn’t like Shane Van Gisbergen clinching a NASCAR playoff spot

NASCAR legend Richard Petty seems to think Shane Van Gisbergen did something wrong when Van Gisbergen won his way into the 2025 Cup Series playoffs this past weekend.

We talk about that, plus break down Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s one-off this coming weekend as a crew chief at Pocono.