Street Knowledge With Chris Graham

That’s just an expression, the thing about sniffing glue, and I doubt many UVA sports fans actually partake, but whatever the vice is, you’re probably doing more of it now, with your football and basketball teams partying like it’s 2009. My effort at helping you find healthier ways to deal with your anxieties is this podcast. The topics: UVA Football: How bad have things gotten, really? An examination SMU left its starting quarterback in to throw a TD pass with 1:42 to go up 33-7, which should p— you off, if you’re a UVA Football fan, because SMU doesn’t need the style points, since the win here on Saturday puts the Mustangs into the ACC title game, and in control of its own CFP destiny. UVA Football: Tony Elliott isn’t interested in your opinion on who should be his QB UVA Footballcoach Tony Elliott has clearly had enough of you idjits who didn’t call the plays for Deshaun Watson or Trevor Lawrence as Clemson was winning natties trying to tell him who to play at quarterback. Inside the Numbers: Simplified g

AEW is headed to the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., for its annual “Full Gear” pay-per-view (Saturday, 8 p.m. ET). I had #TeamAFP AEW beat writer Ray Petree on my “Street Knowledge” podcast today to help me break down the card. To help you follow along, here are the matches: MJF Roderick Strong Will Ospreay Kyle Fletcher “Hangman” Adam Page “Switchblade” Jay White Bobby Lashley vs. Swerve Strickland Four-way match for the AEW world tag team titles: Private Party (c) The Acclaimed vs. The Outrunners vs. Kings of the Black Throne TNT title match: Jack Perry (c) Daniel Garcia TBS title match: Mercedes Mone (c) Kris Statlander International title match: Konosuke Takeashita (c) Ricochet AEW world title match: Jon Moxley (c) Orange Cassidy

It’s a busy week for UVA sports fans. The UVA Football team has #12 SMU coming to town, and the UVA Basketball team is in the Bahamas getting ready for two games against Top 25 opponents. AFP editor Chris Graham covers the big topics of the week. On this podcast: Preview: A lot has to go right for UVA Football to pull upset of #12 SMU The UVA Football program is one win away from going bowling for the first time since the 2019 Orange Bowl. #12 SMU is one win away from a berth in the ACC Championship Game in its first season in the league. Both have a lot to play for on Saturday (noon ET, ESPN2). Injury report: ‘Hoos in, ‘Hoos out for UVA Football for this week’s game with #12 SMU UVA Football coach Tony Elliott confirmed on Tuesday that middle linebacker James Jackson will not be available for this weekend’s game with #12 SMU. “He was nursing a foot, and then gave us everything he had and about 22 plays in, he couldn’t deal with the pain anymore,” Elliott said. UVA Football: Tony Elliott is trying to convince

President-elect Donald Trump isn’t done raiding Fox News for his Cabinet, which is what we expected from the failed TV game show host elected to a second term in the White House. It’s not quite the end of the world as we know it, but apologies if it feels like it sometimes. On this week’s politics podcast, we dive head-first into: Donald Trump might have to give up on his first Attorney General nominee, Matt Gaetz, who we’re now learning as the new week starts reportedly participated in drug-fueled orgies that included underage girls during his first term in Congress. From Warner, Kaine raise issues with Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard Cabinet nominations We got ourselves a 2025 Virginia politics cycle shocker on Monday: Jason Miyares is going to run for a second term as attorney general, ceding the Republican Party gubernatorial nomination to Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. From Shocker: Jason Miyares passes up run for governor, going for second term as AG instead Ken Mitchell, fresh off getting 34.6 percent of the

Joey Logano was the big winner on Sunday at Phoenix, bringing home his third NASCAR Cup Series championship, a month after leaving the track at Charlotte thinking he had been eliminated from the 2024 playoff race. It was a remarkable turnaround for Logano, and an end to the 2024 NASCAR season that had begun nine long months ago in Daytona. Chris Graham and Rod Mullins recap Logano’s victory and the highlights of the 2024 season on this week’s podcast. Also on this week’s show: How will 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports approach 2025 without team charters as their antitrust lawsuit plays out? The latest silly season news Who would have won the 2024 championship under the pre-playoff scoring system?

The road to “Full Gear” continued last night when AEW made its debut in Manchester, New Hampshire, at the Southern New Hampshire University Arena for Wednesday Night “Dynamite.”  Last night, wrestling fans relived the “Wednesday Night Wars.” WWE’s “NXT” aired head-to-head against “Dynamite,” on The CW Network from the famed 2300 Arena, invoking shades of ECW. Tony Khan needed to swing for the fences to compete with “NXT” in the ratings. Thankfully, he hit a homerun.

Is Tony Khan finally getting the hang of booking pro wrestling? The question arises after taking in this week’s AEW “Dynamite,” which featured a payoff in a five-years-and-running tag-team feud between The Young Bucks and Private Party, Adam Cole’s return from more than a year out with a broken ankle and, finally, the debut of Bobby Lashley. Chris Graham and Ray Petree dive into the deep end of the AEW pool here. Other topics of interest include: Orange Cassidy challenging AEW world champ Jon Moxley. How should AEW approach this one, and the match that we know is coming after, between Moxley and Darby Allin? Should Allin get a run with the AEW title? Who is next in the tag-team division now that Private Party has the belts?

Tyler Reddick and Joey Logano have already punched their tickets into the NASCAR Championship 4 finale. Two spots are still up for grabs as the NASCAR Cup Series returns to Martinsville for the Round of 8 playoff finale on Sunday. Rod Mullins of Dickenson Media joins us to preview what we can expect from Martinsville. Mullins also reports on changes on the team of 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace, and the latest on the lawsuit challenging the NASCAR charter system.

Former Waynesboro mayor Bobby Henderson is back, this time running for the At-Large seat on Waynesboro City Council. Henderson joined AFP editor Chris Graham to talk about his decision to get back into the political ring after a two-year hiatus. The focus for Henderson, a military veteran, retired Virginia State Police trooper and lifelong Republican, is on restoring the voice of voters in the city, which has been under the thumb of a MAGA majority led by the vice mayor, Jim Wood, the past two years.

Terry Short Jr. is running for a third term on Waynesboro City Council, this time running for the Ward B seat on the body. Short talks with AFP editor Chris Graham about the 2024 race. Short is one of three independents running for seats against a slate of Republicans hand-picked the sitting vice mayor, Jim Wood, the chairman of the Waynesboro Republican Committee. Wood is the guy who was in national headlines last year for his homophobic slur of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Short was outspoken in his criticism of Wood, who stands to become mayor if the GOP slate is successful in next week’s voting. That is, if we get the vote certified. Wood’s two appointees to the Waynesboro Electoral Board have filed a lawsuit saying they will not vote to certify the local vote absent a court order, raising issue in the suit with state election law. We cover those topics and others, including housing affordability, education and economic opportunity, in this interview.

Lorie Strother, a candidate for the Ward A seat on Waynesboro City Council, sits down for an interview with AFP editor Chris Graham to discuss the 2024 election. The biggest issue facing the city involves the lack of affordable housing, which plays into the growth in the homeless population. Strother, who was homeless herself as a teen, shares her perspective on what the city needs to do to address the housing and homelessness issues. She also discusses her nine-year tenure on the Waynesboro Economic Development Authority, and what the city needs to do to continue to grow the local job base.

I hate that I feel the need to start this story about Ron Sanchez being formally rolled out as the interim head coach at UVA Basketball by addressing an interwebs rumor, but this is the world we live in.

Tony Bennett, after giving a lot of thought to things during a weekend trip on the Rappahanock River, decided, on Wednesday, so, two days ago, that he was going to step down from the UVA Basketball job. It was far from a spur-of-the-moment decision; he’d been going back and forth about his future in college basketball for the past three years. “The thing that has choked me up the most, and the hardest thing to say is, when I looked at myself, and I realized I’m no longer the best coach to lead this program in this current environment, and if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to be all in. You’ve got to have everything. If you do it half-hearted, it’s not fair to the university and those young men. In looking at it, that’s what made me step down,” an emotional Bennett said Friday at his retirement press conference.

Dean Smith retired on Oct. 9, 1997, to engineer giving the North Carolina job to Bill Guthridge, and SI.com columnist Pat Forde was so offended that he helped create an award in Smith’s honor.

Like Kamala Harris, I worked at a McDonald’s, in my case in high school. Unlike Donald Trump, I never got a French fry certification pin for learning how to drop a basket of fries in the grease, which takes all of five seconds to master.

Two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano executed Team Penske’s fuel strategy flawlessly on Sunday, securing victory in the South Point 400 Playoff race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. This win earned him the first of four spots in the NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4.

Sam Houston has been involved with professional wrestling his entire life. The son of Grizzly Smith, Houston’s family is ingrained in the fabric of the business. His older brother is WWE Hall of Famer Jake “The Snake” Roberts, and his younger sister is former WWE women’s champion Rockin’ Robin. From setting up the ring and shuttling wrestlers across Louisiana as a teenager, to winning the Mid-Atlantic Championship and appearing in WrestleMania IV, Houston has seen it all.

Front Row Motorsports has not turned a profit in its 20 years in NASCAR, according to a court filing from its owner, Bob Jenkins, who along with Michael Jordan at 23XI Racing is suing the privately-owned racing circuit to challenge the legality of its charter system, aimed at teams being able to get a bigger share of NASCAR’s $3 billion annual revenues.

Tony Bennett retired on Friday after 15 seasons as the head coach for the UVA Basketball program. AFP editor Chris Graham was at Bennett's retirement press conference on Friday, and reports on the mood in the room, which, yes, obviously somber, looks back on what led to the shocking move by Bennett, and ahead to the prospects for the upcoming UVA hoops season, and beyond.

This week’s “Street Knowledge” podcast on AEW, with AFP editor Chris Graham and columnist Ray Petree, opens with a segment acknowledging the tragic flooding down in Western Carolina, including Asheville, N.C., the home of AEW stars Dax Harwood, Cash Wheeler and Adam Copeland. “Dax Harwood kind of lives on social media, it seems, and he did post yesterday, just that the storm walloped him pretty hard. He was home in Asheville. And man, that situation there, it looks horrible,” Graham said on the podcast. “Roads in and out of town, washed out, power gone, no communications, or very limited communications. It just looks awful. So that's, I mean, of course, there's the much bigger situation, just with all the people who are affected by that, but, but certainly from a wrestling perspective, we'll try to keep tabs on all that. That's, it's just a horrible story.” Also on the show: Review of Night 1 and Night 2 of this week’s “Grand Slam.” WWE apparently has interest in Malakai Black. Would he be a good fit for a re