Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre lend their names, and their cocktail, to college football — really

Thinking out loud … while wondering if any car is a self-driving car if you don’t give a flip.

This week’s sign of the apocalypse — next year’s Arizona Bowl college football game has a title sponsorship with Snoop Dogg and his beverage line with Dr. Dre — Gin & Juice. Yes, the Snoop Dogg Gin & Juice Arizona Bowl. Fo’ shizzle.

Formerly the Barstool Sports Arizona Bowl. That’s some wholesome college activity right there. Definitely outpaces the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, where the winning coach gets doused in a bucket of mayonnaise. Need that swag, though.

More: Providence basketball has already sold 99% of its season tickets for next season.

More: With college basketball's transfer portal now closed, here's the latest RI update.

∎ Matchups for the Friars in the Hall of Fame Showcase at Mohegan Sun next November will start with UMass, followed by either Boston College or Temple on Nov. 23 and 24. No issues with playing local or regional teams in non-conference — especially if the game is on a neutral floor.

The idea is now, and always will be (for the foreseeable future) to maximize your metrics, if not your win column. And maybe your win column, too.

∎ If there is a team that has banked on the transfer portal in a major way, it’s St. John’s. Rick Pitino has largely recruited transfers, rather than younger players, to turn the program around. And next season won’t be an exception to the philosophy.

The Red Storm turned down an NIT offer this past season after almost rebuilding from scratch, and Pitino has taken a bit more time, and been turned down a bit more, than last year. But the Johnnies picked up two major transfers this week in ex-Seton Hall/Syracuse guard Kadary Richmond (all-Big East) and ex-Utah guard Deivon Smith (all Pac-12).

∎ If Ed Cooley-to-Georgetown brought heat last year in the Big East, imagine what Richmond-to-St. John’s could do when the two New York-area rivals meet up next season?

More: Providence basketball coach Kim English has message for teams trying to lure his players away

∎One-time St. John’s and Butler all-Big East guard Posh Alexander is on the move again, this time to Dayton. Hope his transcripts catch up to him.

∎Former St. Andrews product (along with Syracuse, Providence, and Fairfield) Brycen Goodine is also on the move and headed for Oklahoma.

∎ICYMI, Danny Hurley is simply on fire. This week, Hurley earned a walk-on role for WWE Monday Night Raw. And I’ll wager he could probably “layeth the smack down,” if given the chance, just like his team has done the past two seasons.

∎The college sports website On3.com this week provided a “Way Too Early Top 25” look at college hoop next season, featuring four Big East teams in their national Top 15: 4) UConn, 10) Creighton, 14) Marquette, 15) Providence.

Funny, but that’s also my “Way Too Early” Top Four in the Big East mentioned here the past couple of weeks. And St. John’s is charging hard from the outside.

∎Bryant’s Rafael Pinzon, who started at St. John’s, this week decided to remain at Bryant, giving Phil Martelli Jr. (along with Earl Timberlake) two returning players who should keep the Bulldogs toward the top of America East.

∎ The Big East softball championships have been held this week at Providence’s Glay Field. No Friars in the field, however. PC finished 22-23-1 on the year, missing the last tourney spot by two games.

∎Is a non-employment collective bargaining agreement on the way for college sports? Likely. It almost has to happen for some athletic order to be restored — and so the NCAA can potentially avoid paying out nearly $3 billion in past NIL “wages” to member schools’ athletes.

∎Athletic directors across the country, if they aren’t already, will soon be calculating how much of their budget they’ll need to share with their athletes. Expect somewhere between $17 million and $25 million per school. Or risk being noncompetitive.

∎The entire Alabama-Birmingham football team this week signed on with Athletes.org, among several companies organizing athletes in anticipation of revenue sharing. UAB’s head football coach is former Super Bowl winning QB Trent Dilfer.

∎Not for nothin’, but a new bill was introduced in Congress this week aimed at protecting the NCAA, conferences and schools from legal challenges that keep them from governing college sports. The “Protect the Ball Act” is also intended to support broader legislation that would create a national standard for NIL compensation.

∎Mommas, do let your babies grow up to be coaches. Especially if they coach in the SEC, where Georgia head football coach Kirby Smart rings the bell at a cool $13 million. Per Year.

∎My buddy “Big E” says he’s not really one for sarcasm; it’s just that he’s fluent in irony.

∎We don’t need no stinkin’ titles. Patriots executive vice president of player personnel? Sounds like a general manager to me, even without the, um, title. Just sayin’.

∎The Tom Brady Roast: Real tension and real raunchy jokes. It may have been the sports social event of the year. And if you missed it, it might never happen again.

Unless there is a major bag of cash waiting for the “honoree,” who would subject themselves to that kind of verbal abuse? Oh, and if you watched … it was funny stuff for many of us. But not all of us.

More: Andrew Schulz says Tom Brady roasters were told no Robert Kraft jokes.

TB12 was basically unroastable. Nothing seemed to really get to him, except when comedian Jeff Ross picked on Robert Kraft. But when everyone else jumped in on his divorce from Gisele Bündchen, he was as cool as when he led all those fourth-quarter comebacks.

Off-color? That’s what roasts do these days. But I’ll take a Don Rickles-led roast of any superstar back in the day for pure, crying-while-busting-your-gut laughter.

Best lines: Peyton Manning — “My golf handicap is 6.4, while Tom’s handicap is blowing leads in the Super Bowl to my brother Eli.” And: “I know you sometimes live in Denver, and sometimes you live in Louisiana, but you will always live in my shadow” — Brady’s retort to Manning.

Oh, and this one, too: “Vladimir Putin, if you’re watching, give me my [expletive] ring back” — Robert Kraft. Worst performance: Comedian Will Ferrell as his movie-character, news anchor Ron Burgundy. He nearly ruined his own creation. Honorable mention: Ben Affleck (who went on a social media rant) and Randy Moss, who could have used an assist with his joke writing. And not terribly surprising, but there was zero to do with Tampa Bay. Almost as if that never happened. The entire three-hour live show on Netflix beat the “The Dynasty” on Apple TV+, FWIW. By a mile.

∎ X post of the Week I, from @EliManning: “I thought about attending the Roast of Tom Brady last night, but I did not want to roast him for a 3rd time!”

∎ Won’t it be nice for the NFL to grace us with an actual schedule for next fall, so we mere mortals can plan, then get on with our lives?

∎ The Bruins–Maple Leafs Game 7 on ESPN averaged 3.2 million viewers, making it the most-watched first-round game since 2012 and the largest first-round Game 7 audience in NHL history.

∎ Where have you gone, Peter Laviolette? The Providence Bruins haven’t won a playoff series since 2017, reaching the Calder Cup Eastern Conference finals that year.

∎ X post of the Week II, from @barstoolsports: “’If you’re not on the court playing, you should keep your mouth shut.’ — Pat Riley on Jimmy Butler trolling the Celtics and Knicks while sitting out with an injury.”

∎ The Celtics this week showed precisely how good they can be, even without Kristaps Porzingis available and Jayson Tatum not at his best, even if he did have a double-double in Game 1 against Cleveland. The NBA’s Eastern Conference also showed how mediocre they can be.

∎In this week’s “No Matter How Bad You Have It” department, Sox fans, I give you the case(s) of the Oakland-soon-to-be-Las Vegas A’s and the Miami Marlins.

Both teams sit at the bottom of MLB attendance this year, as the A’s prepare for a temporary move to Sacramento next season before their stadium is built — if it is built — off the Vegas strip. But they have won enough lately to move into third in the A.L. West.

Miami? Think they’ve already waved the white flag on the season with the trade of Luis Arraez to San Diego. A team that made the playoffs last year already knows it won’t repeat the performance this year. And we’re barely a quarter of the way through the season?

Miami has gone through fire-sale seasons before. Oakland? They’re onto Sacramento and taking tradition with them. But Boston, it can be argued, has had a front office treating them like Miami’s and Oakland’s, even with some on this Red Sox team currently overachieving, am I right?

∎Mr. Henry, sell the team. Your silence ain’t golden. The Marlins lost 108 games after you bought them in 1999 — and that was after they had won it all.

∎A huge win for the 150th Kentucky Derby — it had its largest TV audience in 35 years, and the largest peak audience ever, 20.1 million, from 7 to 7:15 p.m. Plus a photo finish at the end, with Mystik Dan winning by a literal nose. It was the Derby’s first three-horse photo finish since 1947.

It also beat last year’s ratings, attendance — and betting records. Also helps there were no horse deaths leading up to the race like there were a year ago, along with the temporary suspension of operations at Churchill Downs.

∎Surfing great Peter Pan from Narragansett sent me a note this week, on the passing of Howie Goldsmith — to whom he gives credit for the birth of surfing as a sport in Rhode Island: “The longtime South Kingstown surfer ran the biggest and most prestigious surfing contests in the Northeast and was one of the largest manufacturers of surfboards in the USA at one point in the mid-1960s … in Cranston.”

Cranston? A surfing hub? I mean, surfing or cruising the Ave. is one thing. But who knew this?

Interested in having your questions on Rhode Island sports (and yes, that includes the Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics) answered in a somewhat timely fashion? Think out loud and send your questions, comments and local stories to jrbroadcaster@gmail.com. We’ll share mailbag comments/Facebook posts/threads right here! Join me on Twitter/X, @JRbroadcaster; on Facebook, facebook.com/john.rooke and on Instagram and Threads @JRbroadcaster.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre lend their names, cocktail to college football