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<p>In 328 BCE, at a drinking party in what is now Samarkand, Alexander killed Cleitus the Black — then made the army call the dead man a traitor.</p><p><br></p><p>By Jonah Hale</p><p><br></p><p>The battles get the marble. Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela, Hydaspes. What happened at Maracanda, the old Sogdian city the Greeks called by that name and we call Samarkand, gets a quieter line in the histories — and it may tell you more about the king than any river crossing.</p><p><br></p><p>In 328 BCE Alexander was still mopping up the eastern Iranian lands. Cleitus, called the Black, was not a court ornament. After the destruction of Parmenio’s house, Alexander had split the Companion cavalry. One half went to Hephaestion. The other went to Cleitus, an older Macedonian of the old guard. Britannica records him among Alexander’s most-trusted commanders. Ancient writers also place him at the Granicus years earlier, in the melee that nearly killed the young king.</p><p><br></p><p>That summer, at Maracanda, the trust ended in a cup.</p><p><br></p><p>The sources — principally Arrian and Plutarch — agree on the shape if not every insult. There was a banquet, heavy with wine. Praise of Alexander slid into slight of Philip. Persian manners sat badly with men who still thought in Macedonian ranks. Cleitus spoke for the veterans. Tempers rose. Friends held Alexander back; Cleitus was pushed from the room. He came back. Alexander got free, took a spear, and killed him.</p><p><br></p><p>Then the remorse — so loud, the army’s remedy was stranger than the crime. Britannica notes Alexander’s “excessive display of remorse,” after which the army passed a decree convicting Cleitus posthumously of treason. The dead man was made the guilty party so the living king could go on being king.</p><p><br></p><p>It was not a battlefield decision. It was absolutism practiced with a spear and cleaned up with a vote. Shortly afterward Alexander pressed Persian royal dress and, at Bactra, the court ritual of prostration. The Macedonians laughed that experiment down. Callisthenes, who would not bow, did not long outlive the fashion.</p><p><br></p><p>The empire still had India ahead of it, and a mutiny at the Hyphasis, and a fever in Babylon. But Maracanda is where the breach between Alexander and many of his own shows in a single night: the man who shared the Companion command dead on the floor, the army rewriting the story so the king could sleep.</p>

The Spear at Maracanda

<p>Brent cleared $100. WTI settled $96.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>ICE Brent settled at $101.21 a barrel Wednesday, up 3.4%, after touching $101.58. NYMEX WTI settled at $96.05. First Brent settle above $100 since July.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>By Victor Lin</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>The move is ships, not speeches. The U.S. military said it destroyed five Iranian tankers after Iran tried ballistic missiles on a U.S. Navy warship. Iranian media said Tehran hit two U.S. warships and eight oil tankers in the Persian Gulf; that second claim had no immediate confirmation in the same Bloomberg write-up. Houthis hit Saudi energy facilities. Hormuz is the choke. The tape priced it.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Newsquawk had the same settles — WTI up $3.02 to $96.05, Brent up $3.29 to $101.21 — with session highs at $96.82 and $101.58. DTN’s Barani Krishnan matched those closes. Seventh straight up day for New York crude in other market recaps of the same session.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>The government map moved the same day. EIAs Short-Term Energy Outlook, reported by Reuters, raised 2026 Brent to about $91 a barrel average, nearly 5% above the prior forecast, and WTI to $84.65. Global inventories are down about 400 million barrels year to date and still falling, EIA said. Middle East shut-ins hit 6.7 million barrels a day in August, from 5 million in July, and average about 5.7 million barrels a day in the fourth quarter in that outlook. Pre-conflict output and exports do not fully return until the second quarter of 2027 in EIA’s path. The STEO was finalized Sept. 3 — before this week’s shipping strikes — so Wednesdays $101 Brent settle is already above the annual average the agency just printed.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>TD Securities’ Ryan McKay, in the World Oil piece, said dark flows eased the crude deficit some, but “the market remains tight overall.” Vortexa had oil on water down more than 150 million barrels since mid-July. EIA’s STEO also lifted fourth-quarter U.S. retail diesel to $5.55 a gallon, up 14% in that revision, with diesel stocks heading for a multi-decade low.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>My take: $96 WTI and $101 Brent are a Hormuz shipping print with an inventory underwrite. The annual STEO averages ($91 Brent, $84.65 WTI) are not the Wednesday screen. If tanker attacks keep stacking, the settle can hold a three-handle premium to the government year average. If dark crossings and workarounds scale without new hits, the crack between the STEO path and the cash close is the trade. Watch the ships and the next weekly stocks.</p>

Brent cleared $100. WTI settled $96.

<p>Thursday the SEC votes on LSU. The roster is already closed.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>By Rhett Landry</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Baton Rouge filled the last two chairs on Tuesday night, and it was not with the names the lawsuit was built around. ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported LSU added cornerback Aidan Anding and defensive end Gabriel Reliford — both returning Tigers who’d been off the 105 — and that move locked the roster. Former Ole Miss / undrafted NFL rookies Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris are out of the picture for now. The Reveille put it flat on Wednesday: under the threat of expulsion, LSU filled without the former pros.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>That is the concession. It is not the end of the fight.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>The Southeastern Conference amended its federal lawsuit in Alabama on Tuesday and put a Thursday meeting on the calendar for presidents and chancellors to decide whether to terminate LSU’s membership. Reuters, ESPN, and Yahoo Sports all have the same spine: plenary power in the bylaws, a two-thirds threshold — 11 of 16 — and a temporary restraining order ask so LSU can’t block the room. The league’s own statement Tuesday morning said membership means a commitment to the rules the schools already agreed to. Sankey’s conference is suing a founding member that has worn purple since the SEC was a young idea. That sentence alone should make every Tiger fan sit up.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Kiffin already told GameDay the Clemson call — Wright and Harris not on the card for the 51-10 opener — was about the big picture of the program. He said postgame he believed they were fighting for what was right for those kids. Tuesday nights roster close is the school choosing survival over the fight in real time. Attorney Ryan Downton told ESPN his clients are weighing legal options. A Louisiana judge had already cleared a path with an injunction for the fifth-year group. None of that stopped the SEC from putting expulsion on the Thursday agenda anyway. Yahoo noted the vote could still land even after LSU renounced the pro-player path. Forced association, the filing argues. Institutional control, the filing argues. Plenary power does not need a soft landing.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Saturday is still Louisiana Tech in Tiger Stadium — 6:30 p.m. CT, SEC Network+ — and the No. 8 ranking that dropped earlier this week does not get a bye because Birmingham has a special meeting. Beat the Bulldogs. Stay 2-0. Oxford on Sept. 19 does not care how many lawyers are in the room on Thursday. If the presidents somehow go nuclear and the decision bites immediately, Yahoo floated the ugly hypothetical: Magnolia Bowl turns into a non-conference game. That is not a prediction. That is how loud this has gotten.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Wear purple. Watch Thursday. Then show up Saturday like the conference still belongs to the people who fill Death Valley, because until somebody prints a termination letter, it does.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p><a href="https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/oxford-already-called-itself-ready-nashville-just-made-the-sep-19-noise-louder">https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/oxford-already-called-itself-ready-nashville-just-made-the-sep-19-noise-louder</a></p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/kiffin-wants-saturday-to-feel-like-saturday-again</p>

Thursday the SEC votes on LSU. The roster is already closed.

<p>Kavanaugh said no. A federal judge said yes. Hoskins is on a contempt clock.</p><p><br></p><p>By Camille Reid</p><p><br></p><p>Justice Brett Kavanaugh spent Tuesday declining Missouri’s emergency pitch to revive a Republican-drawn congressional map. Hours later, a federal district judge in St. Louis did roughly the opposite. Midterms do not run on vibes. They run on one map. Missouri woke up with two courts and no clean answer.</p><p><br></p><p>The state’s highest court ruled last week that House Bill 1 — the 2025 map — never became law because opponents filed a valid referendum petition with more than 300,000 signatures. Until voters decide in November, officials were told to run on the 2022 lines. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay that order. Kavanaugh, who handles Missouri emergency matters, said no and did not send it to the full Court.</p><p><br></p><p>Then U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Clark, a Trump appointee, granted a temporary restraining order that effectively requires the 2025 map for Novembers congressional races while the fight</p><figure id="figure-kwny4z5efhmtu49ddg"><img id="kwny4z5efhmtu49ddg" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/30T0cyzOo18uKCYzdi5VQ5s79YwHfrEGMfWqMemlAxzMoqiOgbbi3AmpiMHKwcYu.png" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 " style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/30T0cyzOo18uKCYzdi5VQ5s79YwHfrEGMfWqMemlAxzMoqiOgbbi3AmpiMHKwcYu.png" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure><p>continues. Opponents appealed. By Tuesday night the Missouri Supreme Court ordered Hoskins to show cause Wednesday why he should not face contempt for telling election officials to follow Clark’s order, with arguments set for Thursday.</p><p><br></p><p>That is not “democracy in action.” That is a competence failure with a calendar. Candidates need districts. County clerks need ballots. Voters need to know which neighborhood is in which race. When the state supreme court, a federal TRO, and the Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene land on the same day, the adult move is to pick a lane and explain it in English&nbsp; not to leave the secretary of state juggling injunctions like a side hustle.</p><p><br></p><p>Culture loves a gerrymander morality play. The left will call any GOP map theft. The right will call any delay theft in reverse. Fine. Argue the politics. Just do not pretend the rule of law is optional weather when the midterms are weeks away. Missouri’s own court said voters earned a referendum on HB 1. That is a process claim with signatures attached. If federal court overrides it, say so clearly and own the timeline. If the 2022 map stays until November, say that too. Ambiguity is how you get contempt hearings instead of ballots.</p><p><br></p><p>Competence would look like one map for November, one path for appeals, and no show-cause theater the morning after Labor Day. Hoskins answers by noon Wednesday. The Missouri Supreme Court hears him Thursday. Until then, the Hill story is not which party won” a map. It is whether anyone in a black robe can give election officials a sentence they can actually print.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p><a href="https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/diesel-set-the-record-gasoline-second">https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/diesel-set-the-record-gasoline-second</a></p><p>https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/the-oath-he-would-not-take</p><figure id="figure-2bllwha3wfmtu46lj6"><img id="2bllwha3wfmtu46lj6" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>

Missouri’s Map Mess: Two Courts, One Midterm, Zero Clarity

<p>Tech scored 80. The poll drops this afternoon. Death Valley is still the assignment.</p><p><br></p><p>By Rhett Landry</p><p><br></p><p>Lane Kiffin did not spend Monday talking about Oxford. He spent it talking about Louisiana Tech, and he meant it the way a coach means it when the whole state is already peeking at Sept. 19. The Advocate’s Scott Rabalais had the line from the weekly presser: “Everything’s got to be the same as last Saturday.” Same intensity. Same prep. Don’t let the opponent dictate how you work. He even challenged the fans — mock GameDay stage if you need it, same walk, same noise — because Clemson night felt like the building remembered who it is.</p><p><br></p><p>That building is 1-0. LSU athletics still owns the receipt from Saturday: 51-10 over Clemson, Kiffin’s first one in purple. Tech is Saturday, Sept. 12, 6:30 p.m. CT, Tiger Stadium, SEC Network+. Different animal. Same trap if you sleep. Tech put 80 on Northwestern State this weekend, a program record, and Kiffin said out loud what that means: when you score 80, you’re doing a lot right on offense. He also flagged their 3-3-5 defense — “really different,” lots of challenges — after it held someone to 129 yards and seven first downs, per the Advocate write-up of Monday’s desk. That’s not a throwaway Week 2. That’s a coach telling Baton Rouge to keep the foot down.</p><p><br></p><p>Sports Illustrated’s college desk has the poll calendar straight: Coaches Poll late morning Eastern, AP Top 25 around 2 p.m. ET Tuesday because the holiday slate pushed the Week 1 ballot off Sunday. Preseason had LSU at No. 11 and Ole Miss at No. 9. Both won. LSU’s margin was a statement. Ole Miss survived Louisville 41-38 on a last-second kick. When AP posts this afternoon, we’ll see if the voters moved either one. Until then, the only ranking that matters in practice is the one that shows up on the depth chart for Tech.</p><p><br></p><p>Wednesday the NFL opens — Patriots at Seahawks on NBC. Sunday Jayden’s Commanders go to Philly. Baton Rouge will watch with one eye. The other eye stays on Saturday night and a Bulldog defense that doesn’t look like last week’s leftover. Kiffin asked for the same Saturday. Bring it. Beat Tech. Then the poll and Oxford can fight for the oxygen.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/tech-week-starts-on-a-monday-nfl-two-nights-away" data-mce-href="https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/tech-week-starts-on-a-monday-nfl-two-nights-away">https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/tech-week-starts-on-a-monday-nfl-two-nights-away</a></p><p><br></p><p>https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/oxford-already-called-itself-ready-nashville-just-made-the-sep-19-noise-louder</p>

Kiffin wants Saturday to feel like Saturday again

<h2>In March 1861 the man who won San Jacinto lost the Texas governorship rather than swear loyalty to the Confederacy.</h2><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>By Jonah Hale</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>On March 16, 1861, the Texas Secession Convention declared the office of governor vacant. Sam Houston would not take its loyalty oath to the Confederate States of America. Two days later Lieutenant Governor Edward Clark took the chair. The Raven was sixty-eight, with a house full of young children, and once again he chose exile over a fight that would tear Texas apart.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>He had seen this storm coming. Elected governor in 1859 after a bruising decade as a Unionist senator, Houston had opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, drawn the official condemnation of the Texas legislature, and still come home to beat Hardin Runnels. When Lincoln won the presidency, Houston called the legislature into special session and warned that civil war would end in a Northern victory and the wreck of the South. He refused to summon a secession convention himself, hoping ardor would cool.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>It did not. Oran M. Roberts, John S. Ford, and others printed calls for a January convention without him. The legislature validated it. On February 1, with Houston in the chamber, the ordinance of secession passed 166 to 8. Voters ratified it on February 23 by 44,317 to 13,020. Houston acquiesced to those steps rather than spill Texas blood over them.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>What he would not do was swear the new oath. When the convention reassembled in March, it required current officeholders to pledge loyalty to the Confederacy. Houston refused. He held that the convention’s acts after its February adjournment were illegal. The convention answered by emptying his office and seating Clark.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Reports later said President Lincoln twice offered federal troops to keep Houston in the Governor’s Mansion and Texas in the Union. Houston declined those, too. He would not make his state a battlefield to keep his chair.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>It was not the first time he had walked away from power with the story unfinished. In April 1829, eleven weeks after marrying Eliza Allen, he had resigned the governorship of Tennessee and fled west to the Cherokees who had once named him Colonneh—the Raven—while both he and Eliza kept a lifelong silence about the rupture. In 1861 the silence was public and political. Texas left the Union. Houston left the mansion.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>He moved his family to Huntsville the next year, to a rented place called the Steamboat House. On July 26, 1863, he died there of pneumonia. The battle everyone remembers is San Jacinto. The choice that ended his last office was an oath he would not speak.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p><a href="https://capitolandcleats.com/about">https://capitolandcleats.com/about</a></p><p>https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/diesel-set-the-record-gasoline-second-punch</p>

The Oath He Would Not Take

<p>Labor Day in Baton Rouge. Louisiana Tech is Saturday. The league opens Wednesday.</p><p><br></p><p>By Rhett Landry</p><p><br></p><p>Labor Day in Baton Rouge still smells like Saturday. Purple in the parking lots. Recaps on every phone. And LSU athletics’ official write-up still sitting there like a receipt: No. 11 LSU 51, Clemson 10, 644 yards of offense, lightning delay and all. Sam Leavitt’s debut was the loud part — 230 through the air, 113 on the ground, three total touchdowns. Dillin Jones matched him with 113 rushing and two scores. Winston Watkins Jr. got his chunk. Jordan Ross stole one and walked it in. That box already closed. This is Monday. This is Tech week.</p><p><br></p><p>Louisiana Tech is next. LSU athletics has it Saturday, Sept. 12, Tiger Stadium, 6:30 p.m. CT, and the public notes have it on SEC Network+. Same building that just swallowed Clemson. Different assignment. Tech opened by putting 80 on Northwestern State, per the Louisiana radio desk, which means theyre coming in hot and you’re supposed to care about that even when the whole state wants to skip ahead to Oxford on Sept. 19. Kiffin’s week is the boring one that keeps you 2-0: clean snaps, keep Leavitt upright, don’t let the Magnolia Bowl creep into the practice script before Tech’s charter lands.</p><p><br></p><p>Roster reality for this week is still the AP desk story from this morning: Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris stayed off the active sheet for Clemson while the eligibility fight keeps grinding. LSU didn’t need them for 51-10. Tech week doesn’t change the legal weather. It just means the guys who actually played Saturday get the reps.</p><p><br></p><p>National desk for a Tigers reader: the NFL opens Wednesday, Sept. 9 — New England at Seattle, Lumen Field, 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC, Super Bowl LX rematch, Seahawks defending. That’s two nights from this column. Jayden Daniels and the Commanders wait until Sunday, Sept. 13, at Philadelphia, 4:25 p.m. ET on FOX (club schedule). Wednesday for the league. Sunday for the Heisman kid in Philly. Baton Rouge will watch both with the remote already set for Saturday night in Death Valley.</p><p><br></p><p>Wear purple. Beat Tech. Then we talk about Oxford.</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/1-0-tastes-better-when-louisiana-tech-is-next-and-the-nfl-is-three-days-out" data-mce-href="https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/1-0-tastes-better-when-louisiana-tech-is-next-and-the-nfl-is-three-days-out" data-mce-selected="inline-boundary">https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/1-0-tastes-better-when-louisiana-tech-is-next-and-the-nfl-is-three-days-out</a></p><p><a data-mce-href="https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/oxford-already-called-itself-ready-nashville-just-made-the-sep-19-noise-louder" href="https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/oxford-already-called-itself-ready-nashville-just-made-the-sep-19-noise-louder">https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/oxford-already-called-itself-ready-nashville-just-made-the-sep-19-noise-louder</a></p>

Tech week starts on a Monday. The NFL is two nights away.

<p>AAA’s national diesel average hit $5.9015 a gallon as of Sept. 7 — the highest print on AAA’s own record table. Regular sat at $4.1505 the same day.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>By Victor Lin</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Start with the weekly government board, then the live AAA tape. EIA’s Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update for the week of Aug. 31 had U.S. regular at $4.071 a gallon, down 1.4 cents week over week but up 89.4 cents from a year earlier. On-highway diesel was $5.599, down 5.3 cents from the prior week and up $1.865 from a year ago. California diesel on that same EIA table was $7.218. West Coast diesel was $6.497. Those are not vibes. Those are PADDs.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Then the Labor Day weekend did what crude already promised. Associated Press, citing AAA and GasBuddy, had the national diesel average at $5.85 on Sept. 4, a new high after GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan flagged $5.820 on Sept. 3 as clearing the June 17, 2022 daily mark of $5.819. AAA’s Sept. 7 board is higher still. Regular never broke $4 on a Labor Day before this year, AAA said in its early-September note; it is there now with crude back in the $90s.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>What is pushing it is not a mystery barrel count. It is the stack.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>First, crude. Fighting between the U.S. and Iran resumed into early September and yanked the Hormuz premium back onto the screen. Zee Business timed Brent at $96.80 and WTI at $92.14 by 2354 GMT on Sept. 7, after a week when Brent gained about 7.8 percent and WTI nearly 10 percent. Economy Middle East had Brent at $97.35 and WTI at $92.50 on the same Monday tape. Before the war, AP had U.S. diesel near $3.76 and regular near $2.98, per AAA. Brent was roughly $70 in that same pre-war baseline in the AP piece. The barrel moved. The middle distillate moved faster.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Second, product — the part traders keep having to relearn. Kpler’s Sumit Ritolia told Euronews the gap between crude and European fuel prices is “increasingly a refining and product-supply problem rather than simply a crude-supply problem.” Euronews also had U.S. refinery utilization around 98 percent in the final week of August, which leaves almost no spare capacity if something else breaks. Neil Atkinson, in a Lloyd’s List Intelligence briefing quoted by Transport Topics, put the refined-product squeeze in one line: prices are high and “the physical stocks of these products are dwindling.” Diesel does freight, farms, and backup power. Households can skip a trip. A refrigerated truck cannot.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Third, the pass-through. Independent Grocers Alliance puts fuel at roughly 15 to 30 percent of total food cost. Michigan State’s David Ortega told AP that early shocks get absorbed in freight contracts and retailer margins, then show up when contracts reprice and surcharges stick — seafood and fresh fruit already ran hotter than the July grocery print in that piece. Amazon’s temporary fuel surcharge, plus UPS, FedEx, and USPS fees earlier in the war, are the same mechanism in a shipping label.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>My take: treat diesel as the binding constraint and gasoline as the lagging twin. A $5.90 national diesel average with California past $7 is not a “pump mood.” It is a logistics tax. If Hormuz flows stabilize and distillate stocks rebuild, the crack can ease before crude does. If crude holds the low $90s and product stays tight, regular stays north of $4 and diesel keeps rewriting its AAA high. Do not invent a November number from a Monday print. Watch the next EIA weekly and the Sept. 9 STEO. The pump will tell you before the speech will.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Camille Reid, a colleague, writes: The culture line at the pump is that this is a mood. It isn’t. AAA’s national regular average was $4.15 a gallon as of Sept. 5; diesel was $5.88 that same day. EIA’s on-highway diesel for the week of Aug. 31 was $5.60, up $1.87 from a year earlier. That is a school run, a second shift, and freight that shows up in the grocery cart. Competence means saying the number out loud and governing to it — not treating the pump like optional weather.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Everett Kane, a colleague, writes: Pump pain is real. So is pretending the White House sets the sticker by memo. Diesel hauls food, sand, and steel. When it climbs, the job site and the grocery bill climb with it. Blame the war, the refinery outage, the idle lease, the tax, or the weak dollar — then say which one. A speech does not fill a tank. Policy that stalls supply will show up at the pump whether the press conference likes it or not.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p><a href="https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/90-wti-hormuz-print-maps-still-fade-2026-09-01">https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/90-wti-hormuz-print-maps-still-fade-2026-09-01</a></p><p>https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/lin-markets-tape-2026-09-02</p>

Diesel set the record. Gasoline is just the second punch.

<p>No. 9 Ole Miss survives Louisville 41-38. No. 11 LSU already flexed. Magnolia Bowl is next.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>By Rhett Landry</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Nissan Stadium went loud and then it went ugly, and No. 9 Ole Miss walked out of Nashville 41-38 over No. 24 Louisville in the Music City Kickoff. ESPN’s final box has the quarters 3-3-18-14 for Louisville and 0-10-14-17 for the Rebels. Ole Miss 1-0. Louisville 0-1. Trinidad Chambliss threw for 336 yards and three touchdowns. Deuce Alexander chewed up 159 yards and two scores. Kewan Lacy punched one in on the ground. Louisville’s Lincoln Kienholz answered with 307 passing yards and two scores, tied it 38-38 on a 7-yard rush with 1:28 left, and still left town with a loss when Lucas Carneiro drilled a 48-yard field goal with three seconds on the clock. That is not a soft open. That is a ranked fight that ended on a walk-off.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Baton Rouge already knows the other half of this weekend. No. 11 LSU buried Clemson 51-10 on Saturday night in Tiger Stadium — ESPN’s other box, Lane Kiffin’s first game in purple, Sam Leavitt and the run game turning Death Valley into a one-night eviction. Two ranked SEC brands just won their openers. One did it by 41. One did it by three in a shootout. The AP’s first regular-season poll lands Tuesday, Sept. 8, at noon ET, per the Associated Press’s own preseason note. What the weekend actually did is put both programs on the board with a win and put Oxford on a timer.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Why was Ole Miss No. 9 to begin with? The August AP Top 25 had them there with 1,102 points, two spots ahead of LSUs 988 — Ohio State and Oregon at the top, Georgia and Notre Dame and Texas in the mix, the Rebels sitting in that next tier of teams the voters already believed could play deep into December. That was before a snap. After a 41-38 escape that looked like last year’s playoff DNA more than a polite Week 1, the chatter writes itself: Ole Miss did not look like a team that needs a soft landing. LSU’s 51-10 statement is the other kind of vote-getter — margin, night game, new coach, national window. If the poll moves either one, it will be because of those scores, not because somebody on a podcast invented a ranking.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>Sep. 19 is Vaught-Hemingway. Magnolia Bowl. Kiffin walking back into the building he left. Pete Golding already told On3 what Oxford intends to sound like: Going to be a madhouse, an absolute madhouse, and this whole place is ready … been ready.” SI’s Ole Miss desk carried it as a warning shot at LSU months ago. At SEC Media Days, Golding told WLBT the calendar is not a secret either: “LSU will get our undivided attention in week three, and they’ll deserve every bit of it.”</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>The quarterback is not whispering. Trinidad Chambliss, at the Manning Passing Academy in July, put the target on the board without the coach-speak fog. Asked which game he’s looking forward to most, HottyToddy had him flat: “Louisiana State University.” He called the LSU week “wilder and crazier than any other game that we had last year,” said Oxford’s “going to be electric,” and — the closest thing to a win claim anybody in Oxford said out loud — “just trying to go 1-0 in that game. Same stretch: “It’s starting to be a pretty heated rivalry now, too. Pretty excited about that.” And on the bitterness: “We’re prideful of Ole Miss I would say there is some bitterness toward LSU… so it has heated up. He did not promise a scoreboard. He named the game, named the bitterness, and said 1-0. That is enough heat for a Tigers reader.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>From the outside, former LSU coach Brian Kelly told CBS Sports this summer that if Chambliss plays to the level people expect, “this can be a game that Ole Miss beats LSU.” That is not an Ole Miss jersey talking. It is still the clearest beat-LSU sentence attached to this matchup in public print.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>So here is the weekend, stripped: LSU is 1-0 and loud. Ole Miss is 1-0 and bloody. Both were preseason top-11. Both just fed the poll voters something real. Golding’s place is already calling itself a madhouse for Kiffin’s return. Chambliss is trying to go 1-0 in that building with bitterness in the room. Death Valley can love Saturday’s 51-10. Oxford is circling the 19th. When those two walk out under the lights, the rankings will already have moved once. The scoreboard that night will move everything else.</p><p><br data-mce-bogus="1"></p><p>More on The Field: <a href="https://capitolandcleats.com/the-field">https://capitolandcleats.com/the-field</a></p><p>Also: <a href="https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/1-0-tastes-better-when-louisiana-tech-is-next-and-the-nfl-is-three-days-out">https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/1-0-tastes-better-when-louisiana-tech-is-next-and-the-nfl-is-three-days-out</a></p><p>Also: https://capitolandcleats.com/blog/death-valley-kiffin-night-lsu-clemson-2026-09-05</p>

Oxford already called itself ready. Nashville just made the Sep. 19 noise louder

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<section class="cc-lines" id="this-weeks-lines">
  <h2>This Week’s Lines</h2>
  <p class="sub">Wed Sep 9, 2026  DraftKings via ESPN · Lines move  21+</p>
  <h3>College Football — Week 2</h3>
  <div class="row"><div><div class="g"><a href="https://www.espn.com/college-football/game/_/gameId/401867796" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Louisiana Tech at No. 8 LSU</a></div><div class="m">Sat Sep 12, 5:30 p.m. MT · SECN+</div></div><div class="l">LSU -35.5 / O/U 55.5</div></div>
<div class="row"><div><div class="g"><a href="https://www.espn.com/college-football/game/_/gameId/401856682" target="_blank" rel="noopener">No. 1 Ohio State at No. 4 Texas</a></div><div class="m">Sat Sep 12, 5:30 p.m. MT · ABC</div></div><div class="l">TEX -1.5 / O/U 49.5</div></div>
<div class="row"><div><div class="g"><a href="https://www.espn.com/college-football/game/_/gameId/401856679" target="_blank" rel="noopener">No. 11 Oklahoma at Michigan</a></div><div class="m">Sat Sep 12, 10:00 a.m. MT · FOX</div></div><div class="l">OU -5.5 / O/U 43.5</div></div>
<div class="row"><div><div class="g"><a href="https://www.espn.com/college-football/game/_/gameId/401856678" target="_blank" rel="noopener">No. 23 Missouri at Kansas</a></div><div class="m">Fri Sep 11, 6:00 p.m. MT · FOX</div></div><div class="l">MIZ -5.5 / O/U 50.5</div></div>
<div class="row"><div><div class="g"><a href="https://www.espn.com/college-football/game/_/gameId/401856674" target="_blank" rel="noopener">No. 12 Alabama at Kentucky</a></div><div class="m">Sat Sep 12, 1:30 p.m. MT · ABC</div></div><div class="l">ALA -10.5 / O/U 49.5</div></div>
<div class="row"><div><div class="g"><a href="https://www.espn.com/college-football/game/_/gameId/401856681" target="_blank" rel="noopener">No. 18 Tennessee at Georgia Tech</a></div><div class="m">Sat Sep 12, 5:00 p.m. MT · ESPN</div></div><div class="l">TENN -12.5 / O/U 55.5</div></div>
  <h3>NFL — Week 1</h3>
  <div class="row"><div><div class="g"><a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/game/_/gameId/401872660" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Buffalo at Houston</a></div><div class="m">Sun Sep 13, 11:00 a.m. MT  CBS</div></div><div class="l">BUF -1.5 / O/U 44.5</div></div>
<div class="row"><div><div class="g"><a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/game/_/gameId/401872930" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dallas at N.Y. Giants</a></div><div class="m">Sun Sep 13, 6:20 p.m. MT · NBC</div></div><div class="l">DAL -3 / O/U 48.5</div></div>
<div class="row"><div><div class="g"><a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/game/_/gameId/401872924" target="_blank" rel="noopener">N.Y. Jets at Tennessee</a></div><div class="m">Sun Sep 13, 11:00 a.m. MT · CBS</div></div><div class="l">TEN -1.5 / O/U 38.5</div></div>
<div class="row"><div><div class="g"><a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/game/_/gameId/401872927" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Green Bay at Minnesota</a></div><div class="m">Sun Sep 13, 2:25 p.m. MT · CBS</div></div><div class="l">MIN -1.5 / O/U 46.5</div></div>
<div class="row"><div><div class="g"><a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/game/_/gameId/401872661" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chicago at Carolina</a></div><div class="m">Sun Sep 13, 11:00 a.m. MT · FOX</div></div><div class="l">CHI -3 / O/U 46.5</div></div>
<div class="row"><div><div class="g"><a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/game/_/gameId/401872928" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Miami at Las Vegas</a></div><div class="m">Sun Sep 13, 2:25 p.m. MT · FOX</div></div><div class="l">LV -3 / O/U 40.5</div></div>
  <p class="note">LSU / Texans / Cowboys always on the board. Closest NFL: TEN, MIN, CHI, LV. Source: DraftKings via ESPN. Never invent.</p>
</section>

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