The Sports Curmudgeon

Rogers Hornsby once said:

“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.

Well, spring is still a month away astronomically speaking; but in the baseball world Spring Training is underway and that beginning would probably have pleased Hornsby no end.  From a practical standpoint, the stories coming out of Spring Training camps tend to be formulaic as witnessed by this announcement:

• Yankees’ slugger Giancarlo Stanton has tendonitis in his elbows and may not be available for Opening Day.

When I read that note, my reaction was not one of sorrow or pity; my reaction was more along the lines of “Of course he is injured; he is out of the lineup more than he is in the lineup.”  I thought that reaction was on the cruel side, so I went and checked the stats:

• Since 2019 (six seasons) Stanton has played in 505 games
• Since 2019, there have been 972 regular season games
• Stanton has appeared in 52% of those Yankees’ games.

So, I was wrong; he actually appears in just over half the games over the last six MLB seasons and not under 50%.  Mea culpa …

Not all the reports from Spring Training are as cut and dried as that one.  News from the Angels’ camp is that Mike Trout is going to give up his position in center field and move over to right field “in an effort to preserve his body and keep him healthy.”  Trout too has been out of the Angels’ lineup a lot recently; in the last 4 seasons he has only played in 41% of the Angels’ regular season games; so, an adjustment that seeks to keep him healthy and on the field makes sense.  Except … I wonder how playing in right field is significantly different from playing in center field such that it becomes a significantly less stressful position.

Mike Trout is 33 years old; when he is healthy and on the field, he is one of the best all-around baseball players of the last 25 years; he will eventually have a niche in the Hall of Fame.  Obviously, baseball fans should hope that this position switch works out for him and that he can play in 140 or 150 games this year.  We shall see …

The Angels have another position on the field where injuries have dominated the news.  Anthony Rendon was supposed to be the long-term answer there at third base.  In five seasons with the Angels, Rendon has never played in as many as 60 games; adding insult to injury – – literally – – Rendon will now need to undergo hip surgery this year meaning he will miss lots more time at third base.  So, what are the Angels doing about that?

They have signed Yoan Moncada to a 1-year deal to hold down the fort at third base.  And that signing is an injury story in itself.  Last year, Moncada appeared in all of 12 games for the White Sox and only 92 games in 2023.  As part of his attempt to regain MLB form, Moncada took part in the Puerto Rican Winter League this year whereupon he fouled a pitch off his foot and sustained an injury there that limited his time on the field in the Winter League to 6 games.

At the other point in the baseball spectrum at the moment is a young player for the Orioles, Jackson Holliday.  He is the son of former MLB player, Matt Holliday; Jackson is 21 years old and was the overall #1 pick in the MLB Draft in 2022; expectations for him were unbelievably high last season.  Things did not go well for Holliday The Younger in 2024; here are pertinent stats:

• He played in 60 games.
• His batting average was .189 and his OPS was .565.
• He had 36 hits, and he struck out 69 times.

I got to watch him in more than a handful of his games last year; in addition to looking like a kid who just last week started working on his second razor blade, he appeared to be physically over-matched.  Now, the reports from the Orioles’ camp are that Holliday has added pounds of muscle through his workouts over the winter and that he is hitting with more power than last year.  Holliday is a good fielder at second base – – he also played shortstop a couple of times last year – – and he is an excellent baserunner.  For those who live in places other than Baltimore or Washington, keep an eye out for when the Orioles come to your town; if you get a chance to see Jackson Holliday, you might enjoy it; he will be a good one.

And speaking of young MLB players who “are going to be a good one”, imagine what we might see this year from Paul Skenes.  After a full season of college baseball and a whistle stop in Triple-A games, Skenes threw 133 innings for the Pirates in 2024; in those 133 innings, he managed to strike out 170 batters.  That cameo appearance was sufficiently impressive that he finished third in the voting for the Cy Young Award last season.  The Pirates obviously recognized his dominance and chose to shut him down after that short exposure in the National League recognizing the work he put in during the collegiate season at LSU.

Finally, since today has been about baseball, let me close with these words about baseball by columnist, George F. Will:

“Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

The NBA gave us another All-Star Weekend; it has been quite a while since I found any part of that offering sufficiently interesting to commit to watching it.   Last weekend was no different; I paid it no never mind.  But this morning, I was interested to see if anything noteworthy happened in the All-Star Game and went to CBSSports.com to see what they had to say.  There I found a column with this headline:

“NBA All-Star Game, with little basketball and a lot of Kevin Hart, reaches new low of wasting everyone’s time”

Obviously, I had to read that column lest I be expelled from my local Curmudgeon Club and the article did not disappoint in the least.  Let me give you just the opening paragraph here as a way to convince you to follow this link and read the entire column; it will only take about 3 or 4 minutes.

“If expectations are the root of frustration, then anyone who expected the NBA’s All-Star Game, or the entire weekend for that matter, to be anything other a complete and total waste of everyone’s time deserves to be frustrated.”

The Dunk Contest is an event that outlived its usefulness at least 25 years ago produced something that should have been embarrassing even in the NBA All-Star Weekend milieu.  Mac McClung won the contest for the third year in a row, and he is a G-League player not an NBA player.  This “prestigious NBA event” was won by someone who cannot sit at the end of an NBA bench.  Here are two of his career NBA stats:

1. Time in pro basketball = 3 seasons
2. Total NBA games played = 5

That Dunk Contest “three-peat” is analogous to having a player from the AA Altoona Curve winning the MLB Home Run Derby three years in a row.  That is just a tad more than marginally embarrassing.

Moving on but staying with the NBA …  One NBA player who was not involved with the All-Star silliness last weekend was Ben Simmons; his career arc has been on a totally different vector heading for the last several years.  After several mediocre seasons with the Nets, Simmons and the team reached a buyout agreement; the Nets waived him, and he signed on with the Clippers.  Simmons is only 28 years old; he was the overall #1 pick in the Draft back in 2016, but he never lived up to sort of status.

Injuries – – and back surgery – – have limited Simmons’ playing time and his ability to compete; there is no denying that.  At the same time, there have always been notions that he did not “put in the work” to advance his craft once he got to the NBA and that he was more interested in “celebrity status” than he was to “All-Star status”.  Simmons arrived in Brooklyn in an exchange of two disgruntled players; the Sixers were happy to offload Simmons, and the Nets were equally happy to offload James Harden.

Now, Simmons comes to the Clippers off the waiver wire which should limit the expectations of Clippers’ fans and the Clippers’ brass to the point that Simmons need not be in the discussion for league MVP to meet expectations.  Of course, he is going to a team in LA – – a city where there is clearly a “celebrity atmosphere” …   This could be interesting.

Switching gears …  I have mentioned the situation in Baltimore where massage therapists have accused Ravens’ kicker, Justin Tucker, of sexual misconduct during their massage sessions.  Well, the news got worse over the weekend.  Seven more female massage therapists have now come forward with similar accusations meaning that Tucker has now been identified as a miscreant by a total of 16 women employed at 8 different spas in the Baltimore area.  Two points to consider here:

1. With 16 accusers, Tucker still has a way to go to stand accused of “massage misbehavior” by as many women as Deshaun Watson was back in 2021.  I believe Watson was named by 24 women as a creep.
2. The accusations against Tucker are clustered in the 2012-2016 time frame.  Does that mean there are more accusers to hear from in the period 2016-2025?  Does that mean somehow Tucker “saw the error of his ways” and stopped being a “massage miscreant” in 2016?  What this means to me is that I do not know nearly enough about what happened or did not happen in those massage sessions about a decade ago to make an unqualified pronouncement.

For the sake of completeness, Tucker has completely denied these allegations calling them “unequivocally false” and “desperate tabloid fodder.”  More to come on this issue …

Finally, let me close with a comment about the MLB All-Star Game by Whitey Herzog:

“The only thing bad about winning the pennant is that you have to manage the All-Star Game the next year. I’d rather go fishing for three days.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Since today is Valentine’s Day, allow me to lead off with a dating joke that was a killer back when I was in the sixth grade.  This one was guaranteed to get uproarious laughter even if the listener had heard it three or four times before:

• Q:  Why did the skeleton break up with her boyfriend?
• A:  She didn’t have the guts to keep dating him.
• BaDaBing!   BaDaBoom!!!

Moving on …  Hubie Brown signed off the air last weekend at the age of 91; he had been the color analyst for basketball games on television for about 35 years.  And he was very good in that role; in fact, he made it to the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2005 as a broadcaster.

Prior to becoming a fixture on NBA telecasts, Hubie Brown was a player and a coach.  His playing career was brief; he played college basketball at Niagara; he played basketball while in the Army; he played briefly for a team in the now defunct Eastern League of pro basketball.  He began coaching in 1955 at the high school level; he was an assistant coach at the collegiate level and finally got a head coaching gig in the old ABA.

He began his broadcasting career in 1982, and he did many games as the color analyst with the likes of Al Michaels and Mike Breen.  Those pairings were excellent to the point that Brown was nominated for an Emmy Award back in the 1990s.  I, for one, will miss hearing Hubie Brown on NBA telecasts.

Bonne chance, Hubie Brown.

Switching gears, but staying with basketball …  Back in the summer, it was announced that Doug Gottleib was going to be the head basketball coach at Wisconsin-Green Bay.  No big deal there; Gottleib had played at Division 1 schools and had played professionally in leagues not quite at the NBA level.  He also had a little coaching experience in international basketball.  The wrinkle in that announcement was that Gottleib would be the head coach of the Green Bay Phoenix And Also continue to be the host of a sports radio program on FOX Sports five days a week.

At the time, I wondered how he was going to juggle two full-time jobs without inventing or discovering the 36-hour workday.  But Gottleib said he had a plan for success and that he was going to “give it a go”.  Things seemed to be OK at the start of the season; the Phoenix started off with a 2-3 record.  Those joyous days are well in the past because as of this morning, Wisconsin-Green Bay owns a record of 2-23.  That’s right; they have lost 20 games in a row in the Horizon League.

The optics here are not good to begin with but they found a way to get a bit worse last week.  In the lead-up to the Super Bowl in New Orleans, Gottlieb did one of his shows as a remote from “Radio Row” in New Orleans.  With the team sporting such a bad record, that lack of attention to the team/program got plenty of attention.  Nevertheless, the Athletic Director at Wisconsin-Green Bay is supportive of Gottleib and indicated that he knew about this “excursion” well in advance and had no problem with it.

When questioned about this, Gottleib said:

“If people want to think I’m not doing my job because I’m in New Orleans doing a radio job, which had been preplanned, again, there is nothing I’m really going to be able to say. Other than, my players like playing for me and we are going to compete.”

He is correct.  There is nothing for him to say that will change anyone’s mind about this situation; winning a significantly higher fraction of the basketball games that the team has scheduled would be about the only thing that stands a chance of changing a building narrative here.

Finally, here is an assessment of a situation from Brad Dickson, formerly with the Omaha World-Herald:

“Tragic news tonight. While flying over New Jersey Santa’s sleigh was mistaken for a drone/alien spaceship and shot down by a homeowner. More later on this developing story…”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

As they say on election night coverage, the numbers are in, and we can now make a call.  Super Bowl LIX between the Eagles and the Chiefs was a huge TV success.  The average audience size for the game was 127.7 million viewers which is a Super Bowl record.  To put that in a larger perspective, that audience represents 35.9% of the US population.  And that calculation makes me wonder just what the other 64.1% of the people were doing …

• Last year the average audience was 123.7 million viewers; this year’s audience was up 3.2% year-over-year.
• This year’s average audience was significantly lower than the peak audience.  In the second quarter when the game was still somewhat in doubt, the peak audience was 137.6 million viewers.  Had the game not been a blowout, the average audience would have been much higher.
• The halftime show drew an audience of 133 million viewers which is a record high for halftime shows.

With regard to the halftime show …  About halfway through the presentation, the host of our party, who is a trial attorney commented:

“No way a court reporter could get all of that down accurately.”

To which I replied:

“And if he did, there isn’t an English teacher on the planet who could diagram the sentences.”

For the record,  #2 son informed me that the halftime show was not intended for geezers like me but for a younger audience who is attuned to a longstanding beef between Kendrick Lamar and another rapper, Drake.  Having heard that, I went to Google to see if Drake was related in any way to Paul Drake of Perry Mason fame.  It appears not …

There are other numbers that came in related to the Super bowl game last weekend.  According to ESPN.com, the sportsbooks in Nevada had a good day.  Combined, the sports betting outlets in Nevada won $22.1M over all the possible betting angles for the game.  That beats the previous high combined winnings of $19.7M – – a record that has stood since the Super Bowl game where the underdog Seahawks shellacked the Broncos 43-8.

What makes this record profit more impressive is that the betting handle in Nevada was down just over 20% from last  year as the longstanding sportsbooks there get increased competition from legalized sports betting in other states and from Internet-based wagering.  This year’s total handle in Nevada was $151.6M which means that the books’ profits represented 14.6% of the total handle.  They say that the house always wins; in this case, the house won big …

According to reports, the lion’s share of the profits came from the various prop bets and from same-game parlay bets.  The most heavily wagered prop bet was that Saquon Barkley would score a TD sometime in the contest.  He did not.  That created profit for the house AND it wiped out all same-game parlays that had that popular prob bet included.

Just so you know, the numbers are already up for future wagering on who will win Super Bowl LX in February 2026.  Interestingly, the Eagles are not the favorites – – but they are close:

• Chiefs  +650
• Ravens  +650
• Eagles  +700
• Bills   +700
• Lions  +700

And the longest shots on the board include:

• Titans  @ 200-1
• Raiders @  200-1
• Giants @ 250-1

The Miami Dolphins are “in the middle of the pack” regarding odds to win next year’s Super Bowl game; the Dolphins are at 50-1.  I mention this because of an unusual tone offered by Dolphins’ owner, Stephen Ross in a posting on X.com (formerly Twitter):

“I want to thank the players and coaches for their hard work throughout the 2024 season, as well as the fans for their support.

“As the owner of the team, I am ultimately accountable for our successes and failures. We fell short of our expectations this season, and I understand and share in the frustration in our performance on the field.

“As we now look towards 2025, our football operation will continue to be led by Chris Grier and Mike McDaniel with my full support. Their positive working relationship is an asset to the Dolphins, and I believe in the value of stability.  However, continuity in leadership is not to be confused with an acceptance that status quo is good enough. We will take a hard look at where we have fallen short and make the necessary changes to deliver our ultimate goal of building and sustaining a winning team that competes for championships.”

That sounds less like a vote of confidence and more like a shot across the bow for the GM and the Head Coach.  Playoffs or bust …???

Finally, I closed yesterday with something from Dave Barry and got plenty of positive feedback from it.  So, here is another one from Professor Barry:

“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

A belated congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles who are the Super Bowl Champions for the 2024/2025 NFL season.  In staying with a longstanding tradition, my long-suffering wife and I saw the game at a party hosted by a good friend who lives in Center City Philadelphia.  All the other attendees were “locals”; so, as you may imagine, the atmosphere in the room was raucous.

The oddsmakers had this pegged as a close game and it was for the first quarter; at that point, the Eagles led by 7 points and no one in our cadre of viewers thought the game was decided.  From the start of the second quarter until about two minutes were left in the third quarter, it was a flood.  The Eagles ran off 27 unanswered points in those 28 minutes of play, producing a 34-0 lead over the Chiefs.  No one on the planet thought that score would ever show up in the game – – and yet …

Let me dislocate my shoulder by patting myself on the back for a moment here:

• I had the Eagles winning and covering last Friday.  They did both.
• I had the game going OVER the Total Line.  It did.
• I said Cooper DeJean would make a big defensive play.  He recorded a Pick Six.
• I said the Chiefs would prevent Saquon Barkley from running wild.  They did.

Now let me give you the rest of the story:

• I said Total Offense By Both Teams would be OVER 690.5 yards.  No!
• I said Jake Elliott would miss a PAT.  No!
• I said Patrick Mahomes’ longest run would be OVER 11.5 yards.  No!

            I want to make this next point carefully.  I disagree with Jalen Hurts being the game’s MVP.  Let me be clear: Jalen Hurts played extremely well completing 77% of his passes for 221 yards and 2 TDs.  He was also the leading rusher in the game.  Under almost any circumstances the QB of the winning team with stats even remotely like Hurts’ numbers from Sunday would be the honoree.  However, I believe the circumstances of the Eagles’ win were not ordinary circumstances.

#2 son was not with us at the party in Philly; he was watching the game elsewhere and sent me this text somewhere around the end of the third quarter:

“Super Bowl MVP.  The entire Eagles defense!”

I want to refine that a little bit.

• If I oversaw awarding the Super Bowl MVP Award, I would give the trophy to the Eagles’ defensive linemen as a unit.

I read this in three different accounts of the game, so I take it to be the case; the Eagles defense did not blitz Patrick Mahomes one time in the game.  Even so, the four defensive linemen in the game on any random snap recorded six sacks and pressured Mahomes on 11 other pass attempts.  With that sort of pressure coming from the Front Four, the Eagles were able to deploy 7 defenders on every other pass attempt making things very difficult for Mahomes and Company to string together efficient offensive drives.

Let me say it again for emphasis.  Jalen Hurts played a wonderful game on Sunday.  No one should take anything here as a negative comment on his performance.  My point is simply that the Eagles’ defense did something important in the game that does not happen very often and the performance of the defense – – 6 sacks and three turnovers including a Pick Six – – is sufficiently unusual that it should have been so recognized.

With the Super Bowl in the rear-view mirror, the next NFL topic for consideration is free agency for various players.  That Eagles’ defense will see both Josh Sweat and Milton Williams go on the market; after their performances on Sunday, they should be in line for significant contracts; linebacker Zach Baun will also be a free agent having signed only a one-year deal with the Eagles in the last free agency period.  On the offensive side, Eagles’ guard Mekhi Becton will be a free agent.  One thing is certain in the NFL:

• Starters on the winning Super Bowl team who become free agents get plenty of offers to play for other teams starting in the season after the Super Bowl win.
• The Eagles will surely lose some – if not all – of those four starters.

Finally, Dave Barry offered up a Q&A article regarding this year’s Super Bowl Game.  Here is a portion of that Q&A:

“Q. Which team is favored to win the game?

The Chiefs are favored because they have a solid team, a strong coaching staff and Taylor Swift. Also NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has instructed the referees to ‘do whatever it takes to prevent the Eagles from winning, including the use of tasers.’

I don’t believe that.

It’s right here on the Internet.

Why doesn’t the NFL want the Eagles to win?

Because when the Eagles win, their fans riot.

What do they do when the Eagles lose?

They riot, but not as much.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Let me begin with this from Elon Musk:

“If you look at space companies, they’ve failed either because they’ve had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.”

That may be true for space companies but here in Curmudgeon Central, the finish line for Football Fridays will be crossed at the end of today’s rant.  This is it for the season; it spanned about 4 months; there were highlights and lowlights.  And as soon as this one is finished, the genre will go into hibernation until sometime in August 2025.  Springtime is when most plants “come back to life” after a winter’s hibernation; Football Fridays re-enter the world of the living in late summer.  The life cycle is similar but offset by several months.

 

College Football Commentary

 

I really don’t have much to say about college football this week; that season ended two weeks ago and this is a relatively quiet time for the sport.  Some college football aficionados think that the movement of the defensive coordinator at Ohio State to Penn State is a really big deal.  Maybe they are right – – but it never seemed to me that it was the Penn State defense that was the team’s “problem” over the past couple of years.  We shall see …

More importantly from my perspective is that the Ohio State will lose its offensive coordinator AND its defensive coordinator this year.  Chip Kelly goes to the Raiders as the offensive coordinator there; Jim Knowles is the defensive guy who has been signed at Penn State.  Personally, I think losing the two coordinators in the same season is much worse than losing either one of them singularly.  We shall see …

Ron Rivera has been hired at Cal to be the GM for the football program there.  Look, the job of a “college GM” and an NFL GM are probably very different; nevertheless, it should be worth watching this situation unfold because Rivera was a decent coach at a couple of stops in the NFL but an unmitigated disaster as the de facto GM and coach simultaneously of the Washington Skins/Football Team/Commanders.  He will not be coaching at Cal; he will be “GM-ing” and that could be successful or disastrous.  We shall see …

In college football, many people refer to the “Power 4” conferences – – the Big-10, the SEC, the ACC and the Big-12.  Listen to the announcers and to the players as they recite the schools they played for in college.  Maybe that will give you an idea that the “Power 4” conferences indeed have most of the better young football players playing in those conference games.

 

NFL Commentary

 

            The four players to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame have been announced.  They are:

1. Eric Allen
2. Jarred Allen
3. Antonio Gates
4. Sterling Sharpe

That list pleases me immensely because I have thought for years that three of these players – – E. Allen, Gates and Sharpe – – deserved to be in the Hall of Fame sooner than this.  That statement is not to be misconstrued as a knock on J. Allen; he belongs in the Hall too.  The induction ceremony is scheduled for August 2^nd this year.

The 2024 Detroit Lions’ coaching staff is scattered to the winds.  I have probably missed someone or some ones in this list but consider:

• Defensive Coordinator, Aaron Glenn, to the Jets as Head Coach
• Offensive Coordinator, Ben Johnson, to the Bears as Head Coach
• QB Coach, JT Barrett to the Bears as QB Coach
• WR Coach, Antwaan Randel El, to the Bears as WR Coach and Asst. Head Coach
• D-Line coach, Terrell Williams, to the Pats as Defensive Coordinator

That is a lot of discontinuity to be introduced into a coaching staff at one time.  It is not easy to replace both coordinators at the same time let alone those two guys and at least three more members of the coaching team.  This will be an interesting challenge for Head Coach Dan Campbell in Detroit.

The last time the Super Bowl game was played in New Orleans was a memorable one.  As you try to think back to that game, let me give you a two-word clue:

• Power Outage

A report in the New Orleans Times-Picayune last week said that the electrical company that supplies energy to the building has replaced all the equipment that created that problem 12 years ago and testing indicates that it is fully capable of handling the anticipated energy consumption during the event.  In addition, the lights in the stadium itself have been replaced in the intervening years; the new ones are LED lights which offer two advantages:

1. They draw less power to produce the same light level meaning a reduced demand for energy in the stadium as compared to the past.
2. Should there be a “blackout”, the LED bulbs will come back on more quickly than the old lights did meaning a shorter recovery time.

Looking good on the engineering front …

Both the Eagles and the Chiefs have been to the Super Bowl and have won the Super Bowl in the past.  This is the 59^th Super Bowl game; nonetheless, 37.5% of the teams in the NFL have never won a Super Bowl game; for a league that desires parity, that is an awfully high percentage.  Consider:

1. Bengals
2. Bills
3. Browns – – never been to a Super Bowl let alone won one
4. Cards
5. Chargers
6. Falcons
7. Jags – – never been to a Super Bowl let alone won one
8. Lions – – never been to a Super Bowl let alone won one
9. Panthers
10. Texans – – never been to a Super Bowl let alone won one
11. Titans
12. Vikes

Lots of words have been produced regarding the amazing season Saquon Barkley has had in his first year with the Eagles and the remorse felt by the Giants’ fans and organization.  I believe that Barkley will see a direct benefit as a result of his performance this year.  If I understand correctly:

• He gets a $250K bonus for making it to the Super Bowl
• He gets an increase of $250K in his base salary for next year for making it to the Super Bowl.
• He gets a $500K bonus by being named All-Pro this year.
• He gets an increase of $500K in his base salary for next year for being named All-Pro.

 

The Game

 

(Sun Evening 6:30 PM ET) Chiefs – 1 vs. Eagles (48.5):  Are the Chiefs and the Eagles intentionally trying to upend a fundamental premise as to why and how teams make it to this pinnacle game?  Usually, there are stories of how the two QBs have lifted and carried the team to this point and how the one that has the better game on Sunday night will hoist the trophy.  Now look at these two teams:

• Eagles: Their offense percolates when Saquon Barkley has the ball or when the defense thinks he has the ball and has 9 or 10 defenders chasing him while Jalen Hurts scampers into an open field.  Focus on Barkley and the Eagles have other weapons; play Barkley as if he was a run of the mill running back and watch him dominate the game.
• Chiefs: Patrick Mahomes is in the middle of the worst season in his career.
  • • For the first time in his career, he did not throw for 4,000 yards.
    • This season was his lowest yards per game passing in his career.
    • This season was his lowest yards per pass attempt in his career.
    • This season is tied for the least number of TD passes in his career.
    • He took 36 sacks this year, never having taken more than 28 in a season.

And yet, here are these two teams in New Orleans to determine this year’s Super Bowl Champion…

[Aside: The projection for the size of the TV audience for the game is 125 million souls.  I wonder how that audience breaks down along these lines:

How many watch hoping to see their favorite team win?

How may watch hoping to see their bete noire lose?

How many watch because they have “a little something” riding on the outcome?

How many watch hoping that the score by quarters hits one of their box squares?

How many watch only because they think the ads will be great?

How many watch because it will be a major topic of conversation at work on Monday and they do not wish to look like a doofus?]

This is the one game of the year where I predict the exact final score of the game.  From this prognostication, you can easily discern what I would do if there were to be a “Betting Bundle” for this single game.  The final score of Super Bowl LIX will be:

• Eagles 31   Chiefs 27

The Eagles will win this game differently from the way they got to this game.  I am confident that Chiefs’ Defensive Coordinator, Steve Spagnuolo, has recognized the need to keep Saquon Barkley from running wild in the game and that he has come up with a plan to keep him under some semblance of control without committing so many resources to stopping him that he unbalances the whole defense.  I think the Eagles will need to use short passes to the tight ends and a bomb or two to keep the deep defense honest to come away with the win.  There will be a big play made by the Eagles’ defense and I think it will be made by cornerback, Cooper DeJean.

• So let it be written; so, let it be done…

And for those who are into some of the prop bets attached to the game, consider these:

• Total Offense Both Teams = 690.5 yards  Take the OVER
• Jake Elliott misses a PAT   Take YES at +245 odds
• Patrick Mahomes longest run = 11.5 yards  Take the OVER

Finally, somewhere in the last Football Friday of the season, there has to be an homage to Willie Nelson and Dandy Don Meredith:

“Turn out the lights
The party’s over
They say that all
Good things must end
Call it a night
The party’s over
And tomorrow starts
The same old thing again.”

Back in August …

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

The Luka Doncic/Anthony Davis trade created an eruption of reporting and opinionating – – including here.  I believe the Lakers got the better of the deal in the long-term simply because Davis is 5 years older than Doncic, but time and events will make clear if I am correct or not.  There was one report here on CBSSports.com that brought up an old stalking horse of an argument; and as usual, it is so hyperbolic that it misses the point.

Dennis Schroder is a guard in the NBA; he has been in the league for 12 years and has been with 8 teams in his career.  Schroder is from Germany, and he owns a professional basketball team that plays in Germany; he has been traded 5 times in his NBA career.  Much of what he says according to this report is understandable; he thinks there needs to be less trading/dealing of players after those players and their teams have been together for a while.  He suggests that issue should be addressed in the CBA that codifies things like trades and players’ rights which is also logical and potentially constructive.  However, this is where he went out of orbit:

“It’s like modern slavery.  It’s modern slavery at the end of the day. Everybody can decide where you’re going, even if you have a contract. Yeah, of course, we make a lot of money, and we can feed our families, but at the end of the day if they say, ‘You’re not coming to work tomorrow, you’re going over there,’ they can decide that. They got to change that a little bit.”

Let me make my objection here very clear:

• This is NOT slavery – – modern or ancient.  Trying to invoke slavery as a mental construct for thinking about this situation completely ignores the reality of slavery as an institution.

Slaves were bought and sold – – similar to NBA players who are subject to being traded.  However, slaves were not under contracts that they or their agents negotiated with slave owners.  Slaves had no say at all where they might have chosen to work; most NBA players enjoy that privilege at least several times in their careers.

Slaves did not have a “union” who could negotiate working conditions on their behalf; a slaveholder could be cruel, or he could be benevolent but there was no counterbalance to his behavior and his treatment of his slaves.  NBA players have a union, and they have a mechanism to try to get the union to focus its attention on specific issues related to the work environment.

Slaves could not “withhold services” and just walk out of things like practice sessions – – or whatever might have been the analog to practice sessions in the time of slavery.  NBA players can do that – – and at least one is doing that as we speak.

Slaves could not demand a trade or oppose a trade from one owner to another.  NBA players demand to be traded and then make themselves into pains in the ass to motivate teams to trade them.  I don’t believe that such a strategy would have been benevolently tolerated back in real slavery situations.

Slaves were not paid for their labors; at best they were provided adequate food and shelter.  Schroder acknowledges that NBA players make “a lot of money and we can feed our families”, but he glosses over just how much they do make.  According to Spotrac.com:

• He will make $13M this year.
• He has made $103M over the course of his NBA career.
• He will be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the 2025 season.

Slaves got no salary let alone ones that might generate total earnings of nine figures but even more importantly, slaves had no such thing as “free agency”.  The closest thing to free agency for people held as slaves was to run away – – creating a situation where they could be hunted down and brought back to the place they ran away from.  If that is the “closest thing” to free agency for slaves, it remains quite distant from the free agency that Schroder will enjoy later this year.

I am not suggesting here that the NBA is a perfect working environment for players; certainly, there is room for improvement.  Nevertheless, when players invoke “slavery” or a “plantation mindset” on the part of owners and GMs, they do not raise the level of support that they seek by using such imagery.  It is not realistic, and it detracts from the reality that players may be trying to bring attention to by means of their rhetoric.

Moreover, I am not “picking on” Dennis Schroder; he is merely the most recent athlete to use the slavery imagery to describe how things work in a professional sport.  NBA and NFL players have gone here before Schroder, and I have called them out in those instances too.  And so, let me offer up one idea that might address a bit of Schroder’s concerns.

• If a player has been with a team for a designated period of time – – say 3 seasons just for a start – – he can veto a trade by his team to another team if he will accept a percentage reduction in his salary for the duration of his contract – – say 10% just for a start.
• This is sort of like the mirror image of the NFL’s franchise tag that is put on players by teams.  Here the player is “putting a tag” on the team.

That is not a perfect idea.  It came from about 15 minutes of thinking, but it is a start.  And it does not involve hyperbolic rhetoric about the institution of slavery.

Finally, these words from Fredrick Douglass:

“A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

             A while back in this space, I said that I did not yet consider the Kansas City Chiefs an NFL dynasty of the same sort as Lombardi’s Packers or Noll’s Steelers or Belichick’s Patriots.  I do not want to relitigate that issue, but I do want to say something about dynasties in various sports.  Here is my bottom line:

• Dynasties are a good thing for sports enterprises.

Much of the basis for that assertion is my fundamental idea that sports leagues at the professional level and the so-called “revenue sports” at the collegiate level in the US are at their core entertainment enterprises.  All of what we now consider the “major sports” in the US had their beginnings as shoestring operations that hoped one day to be profitable commercial undertakings.  They have succeeded in that economic dimension significantly because enough members of the general public have chosen to devote some of their discretionary dollars and/or some of their spare time to following and supporting the games put on by the leagues.  Sports created a demand among fans; fans responded by “paying for” their entertainment either directly with ticket sales or indirectly with TV ratings.

So, why are dynasties good for the leagues?  Dynasties create emotional reactions; fans either love them or hate them.  From the league perspective, it does not matter if the dynasty organization is loved or hated; the bigger point is that the dynasty organization is the focus of emotion for lots of fans meaning more attention to the entertainment product.  The love/hate aspect of dynasties is always present; the balance of love versus hate will vary from situation to situation, but it is always there.

In baseball, the Yankees have had several “dynastic” eras.  In the present, MLB exploits the love/hate aspect of the Yankees by featuring them on national telecasts an inordinate number of times.  Do you think it is by chance that so many Yankees/Red Sox games get scheduled for Sunday nights?  Are you surprised that Yankees/Red Sox games draw higher ratings than Guardians/Rockies games?

In football, fans had an intense love/hate relationship with Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the entire Patriots franchise for at least a decade.  Again, the NFL presented that team to fans nationally as often as possible because people who loved the team tuned in to see them conquer their opponent and people who hated the team tuned in with the hope that the Pats would get their comeuppances that day.

There was no real national television presence for the Celtics in their great dynasty of the 1950s and 60s, but once the NBA got a foothold in the national TV landscape, it was “Showtime” for the Lakers that dominated until it became the “Bad Boy Pistons” and finally the “Jordan Bulls” that everyone saw at every possible opportunity.

When Tiger Woods was dominating golf, TV ratings were much higher than they are now that there is no dominant figure on the PGA Tour.  In fact, when Tiger Woods was dominating golf, the entire golf industry was on a more solid financial footing than it is today.  And more than a few folks were tuning in hoping to see Woods botch a key shot that would cost him the tournament.

Here is the deal in a nutshell:

• Dynasties drive interest.
• Interest increases involvement.
• Involvement can be monetized.

In most situations, I do not subscribe to the concept that even bad publicity is good for an organization because that bad publicity draws attention to the organization and attention is a good thing.  When someone tries to use that argument with me, my canned response is to ask them to check with the Archdiocese of Boston to see how that turned out for them.  But regarding the case of dynasties and sports, I think “negative” feelings and passions are good things just as are “positive” fan reactions.

If you browse around the Internet a bit, you will find prognostications of imminent and sweeping fan apathy washing over the NFL and MLB.  The argument goes:

• Fans are tired of the Chiefs and the only reason they win is because the league has directed the referees to ensure that they win.  Here is the problem with that “logic”.  Last year, 123 million people tuned into the Super Bowl and the projection for this year is 125 million viewers.  That may not be a staggering increase in viewership, but it is not “cratering” by any definition.
• Fans have given up on baseball because the Dodgers have bought up all the best players, rendering the lengthy MLB regular season a mere formality.  Well, MLB game attendance has risen by more than 7 million paying customers over the past two seasons; attendance in 2024 was more than 71 million fans; that does not square with “widespread fan apathy”.

The fact is that “dynasties” ebb and flow.  The Yankees had some rough times in the 70s and 80s; the Dodgers went more than 20 years without a championship; the Pats were bad before Belichick and are bad once again in 2025; is anyone worried about the Pistons or Bulls dominating the NBA any time soon?  As that ebb-and-flow proceeds, it sweeps in more fans for that love/hate relationship that can be monetized.  As Sonny and Cher once sang:

“And the beat goes on …”

The Kansas City Chiefs – – notwithstanding my failure to consider them as a dynasty as of today – – will play the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl in 4 days and the TV audience is expected to be in the neighborhood of 35% of the entire US population.  Some folks will only tune in for the ads and for the halftime show; some will hope to see their favorite team win and others will tune in hoping to see their least favorite team fail on the big stage.  But fans are not revolted by or repulsed by a “dynasty” team.

Finally, sports dynasties extend beyond sports themselves; they can become indicators of periods of time as in this statement by Rudy Giuliani:

“I was Mayor of New York during a great Yankees dynasty. I got to preside over the city during four Yankees championships.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports ………

 

 

MLB has fired one of its umpires, Pat Hoberg, after a “lengthy investigation” for sharing a legal betting account with someone who bet on baseball games.  It was the friend who shared the account(s) who did the betting and not Hoberg which introduces various levels of strangeness into this situation.  Please take a moment and follow this link to a report at espn.com for a summary of the details in this case; the evidence is not nearly as open-and-shut here as it was in the Tim Donaghy matter in the NBA about 20 years ago.  Hoberg admits to errors of judgment but “adamantly denied” to Commissioner Manfred that he ever bet on baseball.

The “shared accounts” became a thing due to Iowa law regarding legal online sports betting.  To use those betting accounts, the bettor had to be physically in Iowa and the phone or other device used to place the bet had to register as connected to a site that showed it was in Iowa.  The friend was not always in Iowa when he wanted to make a wager and asked Hoberg to join his account(s) to place wagers for him when he was out of state.  Agreeing with that request was the first error in judgement; and unfortunately, it was not the last one.

According to the ESPN report, Hoberg was regarded as the best ball-and-strike umpire in MLB.  He will be eligible to petition for reinstatement no earlier than the opening of Spring Training 2026; it will be interesting to see how MLB handles any such petition because in the official statement announcing this termination, it says that there is no evidence that Hoberg bet on baseball games but that his friend did.

Moving on …  There was an announcement last week that FOX signed Jameis Winston to be a “Super Bowl sports correspondent” this year.  When I read that, my first thought was that Carson Wentz must have been otherwise occupied …

Switching gears …  The NFL’s international footprint will undergo another expansion in 2026.  According to a report in the Herald Sun – a newspaper in Melbourne, Australia – the NFL will play 3 games in Melbourne starting in 2026 with the games to take place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.  This venue is the largest sports stadium in the Southern Hemisphere according to Wikipedia and it can seat just over 100,000 fans.

I can attest to the popularity of NFL football in Australia.  We went on a trip to Australia and New Zealand that would have had us in flight as the Super Bowl was in play; that was unacceptable; so, we flew to Australia two days early to adjust to jet lag and then to go and see the game live at a sports bar in Sydney.  The game happens there on a Monday morning starting at 9:00 AM for pre-game “stuff”.  The sports bar we found was a 4-story building with one floor devoted almost entirely to betting on the game; the other three floors were packed with people on a Monday morning to watch the Super Bowl.  Moreover, Australian fans know the game and the rules; this is not the only game they watch during a season.

To put that observation into perspective, we were there in 2012 – – the second time Eli Manning and the Giants beat Tom Brady and the Pats in the Super Bowl.  Assuming that level of interest has grown in the intervening years, it is possible that Australian fans will fill that 100,000-seat venue for that regular season game.

The dominance of the NFL as a sports enterprise continues to amaze me.  Think about this season for a moment:

• Three of the worst teams in the league are in three of the largest markets in the country – – the Bears, the Giants and the Jets.
• Three of the best teams in the league are in three much smaller markets – – the Bills, the Chiefs and the Vikes.
• No problem with dwindling fan interest under those circumstances; the league just keeps on keeping on.
• The upcoming “Australian regular season games” will mark the fourth continent to experience NFL regular season football.  There are only seven continents and one of them is Antarctica which will never be considered for NFL football.

Elsewhere …  NBA Commish, Adam Silver, was a guest on a podcast and said that he was in favor of reducing NBA games from 12-minute quarters to 10-minute quarters which is the length of college games and international pro basketball games.  Silver admitted that he might be in a significant minority by liking this idea, but he did not walk away from it.  People have experienced the phenomenon of “shrinkflation” at the grocery store; if Adam Silver were to get his way, shrinkflation would come to the NBA.  You pay the same price; you get less product.

It would be interesting to see what might be the network reaction to a serious proposal for “shrinking” NBA games.  On one hand, the networks just paid $76B for 11 years of “48-minute basketball” and not “40-minute basketball”.  On the other hand, shortening the game on the court might allow for tighter scheduling for the networks as games fit into smaller time windows.  I don’t know which way the networks might come down on that.

Finally, consider this observation by former Dodgers’ manager Tommy Lasorda:

“If Mike Scioscia raced his pregnant wife, he’d finish third.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

 

 

Fay Vincent died yesterday at the age of 86; the cause of death was bladder cancer.  Vincent was MLB Commissioner from 1989 through 1992.  His time as the head of the sport was tumultuous to say the least; in those three years he dealt with the banishment of both Pete Rose and George Steinbrenner, league expansion and labor unrest leading to a lockout.  He also happened to be in the Commissioner’s seat when the World Series was “interrupted” by an earthquake.

Rest in peace, Fay Vincent.

The other piece of big news from last weekend is the NBA trade involving Luka Doncic to the Lakers and Anthony Davis to the Mavs.  The analysis of that exchange at CBSSports.com has this lead sentence:

“The Dallas Mavericks just made the worst trade in NBA history.”

When you consider that Wilt Chamberlain was traded (twice) and Kareem Abdul Jabbar was traded and Kobe Bryant was traded, that lead sentence might be a tad hyperbolic, but the Mavs should have been able to get more than Davis and a first round pick out in the future for a 25-year-old Luka Doncic.  While just about everyone assigns the Lakers as the winners in this exchange – – as do I – – one of the losers is Doncic himself.

Had he been a Maverick this summer, he would have been eligible to get a “super max contract extension”.  The NBA salary cap rules are Byzantine at best so let me go on what reports say about his contract situation without the details.

• “Super Max” would be worth about $345M over 5 years BUT only the Mavs can make that offer based on Doncic’s years in the NBA and who drafted him and how long he had been with that team before being traded.
• The best extension he can get now is about $230M over 4 years and he can get that deal from the Lakers or anyone else if he becomes a free agent.
• Moreover, Texas is a state with no income tax; California has an income tax with the top marginal rate being 13%.

The pairing of Doncic with LeBron James makes the Lakers into championship material for 2025.  The move from Dallas to LA might wind up costing Doncic tens of millions of dollars.  Do not shed crocodile tears over that “loss”; Doncic’s current deal has another year to run, and he will make $43M for the 2025/2026 season before any sort of monster extension contract might kick in.

Moving on …  According to a story that broke in the Baltimore Banner, Ravens’ kicker, Justin Tucker, has been accused of “improper behavior” regarding masseuses in the Baltimore area.  If this sounds to you like a reprise of the Deshaun Watson situation in Houston, you would be correct.  Skipping all the sordid details, the only significant difference in the two sets of accusations is in the number of women making allegations in the two cases.  Watson faced accusations from almost two dozen women; Tucker’s total is still approaching one dozen.

These alleged improprieties have been going on for a while because one of the accusers filed a document with the spa that employed her about such behavior back in 2015.  That tidbit of course leads to the question of why this is coming to light now and not back in the past proximal to the time of the behavior.  Not to worry, the NFL is investigating and that should take somewhere around a couple of years to come to a conclusion that will never be made public thereby clearing up this matter in the minds of fans and other parties who are interested in it for publicity purposes.

It will be interesting, however, to see how the NFL deals with Tucker in comparison to how the NFL dealt with Watson given that the alleged behaviors involved are quite similar.

• Watson is a QB; Tucker is a Kicker.  QBs in general are more valuable and more visible to a franchise and the league than kickers.
• Watson is a middling QB; Tucker is one of the best Kickers ever.
• Watson was fined and suspended by the league for a full season’ Tucker … TBD.

Tucker says the accusations made by all these women are “unequivocally false”.  This story is nowhere near over …

Switching gears …  I read a report that the eight United Football League teams will be “headquartered” in Arlington, TX.  There is some confusion here, but it seems that games will be played in the “home cities” of the teams but that all game prep and administrative functions for the eight teams will be in Texas.  This does not seem to be a return to the concept of the UFL playing all its games in the Birmingham area; it seems that Arlington will be “home” for players and for practice facilities and the like but that games will be distributed to the places where the teams are nominally representing.

If I have it right, the only justification for such an arrangement would be financial benefit and that reminds me that even with FOX and ESPN TV deals in place, the UFL remains a work in progress as a viable economic entity.  In any event, the start of the 2025 UFL season is going to begin on March 28^th – – right in the midst of March Madness.  The regular season will be ten weeks long – – with no BYE Weeks thankfully – – and will culminate in the UFL Championship Game on Flag Day, June 14^th.

Finally, having mentioned Justin Tucker above who is a Baltimore Raven, let me close with this observation by Edgar Allan Poe:

“I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………