Timing … Timing … And Timing …

A few days ago, I suggested here that the significant jump in the NFL salary cap would cause folks to shake their heads at some of the contracts offered to good-but-not-great or even promising-but-unproven players. In terms of real estate, they say the three most important factors are “Location … location … and location”. Looking at the free agency frenzy this year, I think it is clear that the three most important factors for cashing in on free agency are:

Timing …
Timing … and
Timing.

If reports are accurate, Brock Osweiler will over the next 3 seasons make $7.9M more than Tom Brady will make. Sure, Osweiler is younger and perhaps Tom Brady may not last for 3 more seasons. Nevertheless…

Recently, CBSSports.com had a report saying that Roddy White blamed Falcons’ offensive coordinator, Kyle Shanahan, for screwing up the Falcons’ season last year and blamed Shanahan for the team decision to release White. That report had the potential to become a “juicy story” but it seems to have blossomed and then faded into oblivion. Obviously, I have no insight into that situation whatsoever. However, I have said before and will say again here:

If Kyle Shanahan’s last name were Flabeetz, he would not now be nor would he have been given a job as an offensive coordinator at such an early age.

Let me just suggest that Shanahan the Younger had one glorious season in Washington and then helped to preside over one of the most dysfunctional teams in North American sports for a couple more years. He next surfaced as the offensive coordinator with the Browns for a year; that was anything but a success and he asked out of his contract in Cleveland – admittedly a smart move – so that he could take the Falcons’ offensive coordinator job. Now this report…

Aubrey McClendon was a minority owner of the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder. McClendon was also currently charged with violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; the charges include bid-rigging and improper collusion with regard to oil and gas contracts. Obviously, the details surrounding those charges are way above my pay-grade so I will not try to explain them here. Given the other news items related to McClendon, I suspect they have to do with securing fracking rights because he was routinely referred to as “The Shale King” and/or “The Fracking King”.

Earlier this week, Aubrey McClendon died in a fiery crash when the vehicle he was driving hit a bridge support at high speed and blew into a fireball. That happened one day after the Federal charges for anti-trust violations became public. Obviously, this has led to speculation that he took his own life. In terms of his ownership of the Thunder, he was a 20% shareholder in the group that originally bought the Seattle Supersonics back in 2007. Subsequently he increased his share of ownership buying out one of the other minority owners.

You may remember his name from back in that time; he was the minority owner who “let the cat out of the bag” regarding the purported willingness of the new owners to keep the team in Seattle if they got the kind of arena deal they wanted. It was McClendon who infamously said:

“We didn’t buy the Supersonics to keep them in Seattle.”

That significantly undermined the NBA’s negotiating position to get a new playpen for the team and then-Commissioner David Stern fined McClendon $250K for running his mouth. Given that he was probably worth something comfortably north of $1B at the time, I doubt that he minded.

Changing the subject here, perhaps someone can explain to me the current fascination with Ronda Rousey. Simply put, I do not get it. For a while she was a dominant force in MMA competitions beating many opponents in only a few seconds. She also engaged in a war of words with Floyd Mayweather Jr. on the subject of which one would kick the other one’s ass and how often. Since my over-arching view of MMA as a sport is that it is pro-‘rassling where the blows actually land and the blood is real, I saw that interplay with Mayweather as typical promotional fodder. Never did I expect to see the two of them in any sort of ring engaged in a real fight.

Then Rousey lost a fight. Not only did she lose, she was KO-ed. But that seems not to have diminished her celebrity status even a little bit. There were reports that she revealed that she had suicidal thoughts in the days after her defeat. Given the previously convenient promotional exchanges with Mayweather, I took those reports with a grain of salt. It seems that the latest installment in her celebrity diary is that one of her rival MMA fighters has said that she is finished as a fighter because she is more interested in having a baby. There was another report calling Rousey a “broken woman”. Here is my question:

Will there ever be a lid put on this sort of stuff?

I admit that I am a troglodyte and often have difficulties understanding the core of modern pop culture. That is why I need someone to explain this fascination to me because it makes no sense in my worldview.

Finally, much has been made of the Ivy League’s decision to ban tackling from its football practices during the season. Brad Rock of the Deseret News had a very interesting interpretation of that decision:

“Ivy League coaches have voted to ban tackling in practice during the regular season.

“Instead, players must shout out the Euler-Lagrange Equation to bring down a runner.”

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