Get these AI-optimized NIL whiskeys out of my face!

Howdy! Welcome to your Thursday FOIAball. If you missed yesterday’s deep dive into Bo French, give it a read (there’s no paywall). It’s really fun, and I think it shows exactly what powerful people are willing to ignore in service of their own needs.

Not that, like, we needed a refresher given the past ten years. But when you draw a line somewhere, like some Republicans did this week, it casts a stark light on just how okay you are with everything else. 

And yet, that wasn’t the thing that made me the most mad this week. What really had me fuming was AI-optimized whiskey. 

What’s that have to do with college football? Read on. 

I am very cognizant that one of the biggest complaints about the media is that we’re always so negative. We’re constantly harping on society’s ills, focusing our attention on awful figures, shouting about how terrible things are. 

So I’d like to start by talking about a truly positive development. One at the intersection of sports and independent media.

This week, Tar Heel Blue launched. It’s a subscriber-funded media site that covers UNC athletics. Although “covers” might not be the right word. For $25 a month (FOIAball is $7), you can read not a single word about the biggest story in college football today, UNC defensive coordinator Steve Belichick resigning. 

What a steal. 

The site comes a week after Front Office Sports profiled the rise of these new media entities, which have popped up at Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi State. 

A monthly subscription to these sites is much pricier than most reader-funded publications (again, $7 a month here). But in exchange, fans get access to “exclusive coach and athlete interviews, recruiting analysis, and behind-the-scenes stories.”

While these are technically independent, owned and operated by a firm called RallyTown, their revenue goes right back to the school’s NIL fund.

I’ve learned, as I’ve started my own subscriber-funder media business, it’s extremely useful to ask for advice from people whose businesses are going well.

Glory Glory, Georgia’s site, employs five people already. So if you know how a subscriber-funded media site can pay five salaries out the gate and still have money left over to give to the school, please, let me know ([email protected]). 

The Athletic recently estimated that Georgia’s football roster costs almost $35 million. If you know how a subscriber-funded media site can convince a school that it can make enough profit to provide a meaningful dent in that, I would love to hear more ([email protected]). 

I mean, having worked myself in the world of subscriber-funded media for longer than RallyTown has existed, I personally had no idea this business was so lucrative. If I find out their secret, I’ll be more than happy to share with everyone.

Okay, onto the hatin’.

These sites don’t generate revenue solely on subscriptions. They also sell merchandise. But it’s not just banal, upper-middle-class tailgate fare like performance polos. At least two RallyTown sites—Alabama and Mississippi State—have whiskey lines. 

I love whiskey, but I’ll be the first to tell you I’m no connoisseur. My palate isn’t capable of discerning distinct flavors and aromas and mouthfeels. My judgment is binary. I find whiskey to be good or bad.

Never know until I taste it. But I feel confident stating that Alabama’s 1831 Edition, 114-proof with notes of "savory dark chocolate" ($99.99), and Mississippi State's 1878 Reserve, 108-proof with hints of "dense cacao" ($99.99), are bad. 

How do I know? Because they aren’t whiskey. At least not according to what you and I understand whiskey to be.

If the almost identical product names, descriptions, and prices didn’t give it away, this ethyl alcohol-based product is a Silicon Valley-incubated, venture capital-backed, AI-native disruption play. 

You’ve heard of B2B Saas? Welcome to B2B MaaS. That’s “Maturation as a Service,” the pitch Bespoken Spirits uses for its proprietary technology. It started in a Menlo Park incubator and claims it can create distinct whiskey profiles for small businesses to brand and sell, generating the complexity and depth of a 12-year-old spirit in just a couple of days.

Not to sound like a wistful, mid-60s alcoholic, but whiskey is made with care, attention, love, and patience. There’s imperfections, there’s differences, there’s individuality in every barrel and every bottle. When you taste it, you know you are genuinely enjoying the fruit of someone’s very difficult labors. 

That’s the kind of thing (humans, humans enjoying things made by other humans) that every tech entrepreneur absolutely abhors. Tell me if this production process makes you thirsty. 

“We have a lot of different input variables that we can modify. Ultimately, the statistical modeling and the machine learning is trying to help us optimize those parameters.” 

In a PR profile, Bespoken Spirits described itself as “a cross between 23andMe, Nespresso, and Impossible Foods.” 

I honestly don’t even know what to do with that. 

Bespoken Spirits keeps its technology closely guarded, but imagine running a tree branch across a microplane, tossing the shavings into a paint can full of cheap distillate, and bringing it to Home Depot to let one of their agitators shake it for an hour or two.

If you buy one of these bourbons, you should know that it is crafted with the kind of profound respect that only a start-up can have for its customer base. Just listen to the founders discuss their work on Ole Miss’ The Grove bourbon.

"What do I know about Oxford, Mississippi? Not much. You know, I know that tailgating is probably a really big experience there. Or at least that's what I've read. But AI is allowing us to learn about these microcommunities in a lot more of an effective way.”

These people do not care about your school, or about the idea of good whiskey. They just want you, a sucker, to think they do. 

And yet, so many places have started doing this. Alongside the already mentioned Alabama, Mississippi State, and Ole Miss, the company also makes bourbons for the following universities: Kentucky (which should know better), Eastern Kentucky (which should know better), Tennessee (which should know better), Florida, UConn, Central Missouri, Omaha, Rice, St. John’s, and Marietta.

Please… get out of my face with this. Good things take time, and care, and effort, and attention, and can be difficult and painful. That’s what makes them good. And that’s what everyone in charge of society seems to want to actively destroy for the sake of optimization and valuation.

But, despite hacking the supposedly “slow, wasteful, and antiquated spirits industry,” it seems to cost just as much as a bourbon that takes a decade to make. I wonder what their margins are!

Whether it’s a content site that’s trying to crowd out real journalism by disguising university PR as independent media, or whiskey distillers who have no respect for the craft, we need to say “no.” To all of this.

Instead, we need to pay for things that are created by real people who care. Who love what they make. It’s our only way out of all this nonsense. 

Thank you, as always, for reading! I’ll see you next week! 

Binary code via fotograzia/Getty, Whiskey via Yea Alabama and State 1878