AFP Podcasts

The UVA Football team opened its 2025 season with a visually impressive 48-7 win over Coastal Carolina on Saturday. What did we really see, though? Part of my job is to try to make sense of such things. On the pod, I go over the basics, tell a nice story about Cam Ross, the game MVP, who has been in college since 2019, and then break down, in granular detail, my Week 1 Report Card. ICYMI Report Ca...

A Waynesboro man is on a mission to improve safety for everyone on the road after his daughter, Robyn, died tragically in New York City while doing bicycle messenger work in 2019. Three weeks after their death, his younger daughter, Rachel, who was doing a training ride, was hit by the driver of a car in Charlottesville. Rachel, thankfully, was not seriously injured in the bicycle crash. “Think ab...

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.

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 Xfi...

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...

#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 scene...

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....

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 d...

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...

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 produce...

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 Foo...

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.

Butch Wells , a member of the Augusta County Board of Supervisors, called me on Wednesday to address the controversial cancellation of a planned Pride Month event at the Augusta County Library that had been scheduled for this past Monday. The explanation for how things went down last week on this doesn’t put anybody involved in the decision to pull the plug on the Pride Month event in a positive l...

Still no news on the status of Gary Taylor , the head coach of  Cavalier Aquatics , the  Piedmont Family YMCA  competitive swim team, and an assistant coach with  UVA Swimming , who is currently serving a two-year probation handed down by the  U.S. Center for SafeSport . AFP was the first to report on the investigation that concluded with Taylor admitting to emotional misconduct while coaching swi...

Eight immigrants went to work in Harrisonburg on Tuesday morning and didn’t return home that night. Crystal Graham tracked down the story of what happened to them, talking with a witness at the scene where the FBI and Homeland Security detained the eight, and threatened locals who tried to intervene to inform the immigrants of their rights.

The Alejandro Queen will bring all her showmanship to the stage – big hair and makeup and elaborate clothing – Saturday night at  The Foundry  in  Waynesboro . On the pod: I speak with AFP editor Crystal Graham, who interviewed Alejandro Circelli, the Staunton man behind The Alejandro Queen, to talk about how he became a drag performer, his life as a gay man in the conservative Shenandoah Valley,...

The world learned Thursday night that Brian O’Connor, who had signed an extension with UVA just last June that paid him $1.4 million a year, making him the eight-highest-paid coach in college baseball, is now the second-highest-paid coach in college baseball, at $2.9 million a year. Mississippi State Athletics went out of its way to make this public – which is to say, they didn’t make reporters fi...

I’d much rather be writing about UVA Baseball getting ready for another Super Regional weekend, but things didn’t work out as expected. Instead, the news is, Brian O’Connor left town in the middle of the night for Mississippi State, supposedly because Mississippi State is a better situation baseball-wise. I’ve been covering this from all possible angles – examining the money, the impact of the mov...

Rod Mullins started off our podcast talking about this past weekend’s Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600, and NASCAR star Kyle Larson’s second failed attempt at “The Double.” A sidebar story about a fan who tried to steal Ross Chastain’s hat in Victory Lane at the 600 led to a lengthy discussion of ‘70s and ‘80s superfan Morganna the Kissing Bandit, and whether her on-field incursions were real or kayfabe...

#TeamAFP editors Chris Graham and Crystal Graham get together for our weekly “Street Knowledge” podcast, which starts with a high school football coach arrested for DUI, and ends with the president pardoning a corrupt Virginia sheriff. Topics in the podcast include: Waynesboro High School football coach arrested on misdemeanor DWI charge Augusta County: VCSB purchases property for crisis center, s...

How about a half-hour of baseball talk to start your week off? All apologies to the other ball sports, but baseball is my jam. On today’s show: The Baltimore Orioles fired manager Brandon Hyde over the weekend, and the firing season may not be over just yet. The Washington Nationals, for their part, are in Year 5 of a perpetual rebuild. Are the pieces in place enough to build a winner around? UVA...

AFP editors Crystal Graham and Chris Graham have been hard at work this week tracking down the details of three ongoing controversies involving the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office. In our Friday podcast, #TeamAFP breaks down: Augusta County: Family of man who died in police custody wants answers The family of a Staunton man who died in the back of an  Augusta County Sheriff’s Office  patrol car on...

It’s weekly NASCAR podcast time, and we have to go into depth about Kyle Larson, who now has three Cup Series wins on the season, and is about to test the waters with another try at the Indy 500/Coca Cola 600 double on Memorial Day weekend. But since our intrepid NASCAR journalist, Rod Mullins, is a lifelong Cincinnati Reds fan, we had to spend a good 15 minutes at the top talking about how Pete R...

The rain is here, and it’s going to get interesting in the Shenandoah Valley and Central Virginia this week, weather-wise. #TeamAFP’s Chris Graham and Crystal Graham talk about the weather to open the Monday podcast. Crystal Graham is our resident weather reporter. She has the scoop on what we can expect from the slow-moving storm making its way from the Southeast. Also on the show: Crystal update...

Just last week, Joey Logano and Baseball Hall of Famer Chipper Jones engaged in an odd back-and-forth over a late-race mistake by Logano at Talladega. So of course, it was Logano who would go on to take the checkered flag a week later in Texas. The NASCAR gods are having fun with us.