The Sports Curmudgeon®

The Anaheim Ducks are the Stanley Cup Champions. I watched most of last night’s final game; and even though it was a rout, I found it interesting because I was able to focus on the way NBC televised the game. They did a very good job. Sadly, ratings – even on NBC – for the Stanley Cup Finals were not good. According to USA Today, TV ratings for live sporting events last weekend gave the NHL on NBC in primetime a rating of 1.5, which translates into only 1.1 million households. The XFL – also an NBC Sports primetime offering – never dropped its ratings that low. For comparison purposes last weekend, golf drew a 2.6 rating and other assorted basketball and baseball games all drew ratings over 3.0. As I said, NBC did a good job putting on the game and hockey is a fun game to watch when the game is meaningful. So all of this seems like a giant downer.

The NHL has to find a way to make its games more visible and more attractive during the regular season. Maybe that means getting out of whatever deal they have with Versus and getting on a higher profile network/cable channel; maybe that means televising games of national interest less frequently so that each of those games becomes an “event” instead of an “occurrence”; maybe that means both of these things and a couple of other things too to spark more interest and visibility. The NHL needs some new thinking in the way it presents its product to an audience that needs to be drawn to the game. They have spent the last decade at least – and probably longer – presenting the game to the hardcore fans; that’s preaching to the choir. I think they need to move on to a new presentational strategy.

In case you found yourself bored to tears such that you read one of the long feature pieces about the America’s Cup elimination round, you know that the American entry – called BMW Oracle – was routed by an Italian boat that won 5 out of 6 races against BMW Oracle. Just a follow-up note here to give you an idea how competitive BMW Oracle was, that same Italian boat and crew just lost the next round of the elimination series to a New Zealand yacht by a 5-0 score. The “owner”/”backer” of BMW Oracle was Larry Ellison who is the CEO and a member of the Board of Directors of Oracle Corp. Given all the time he spent on the building and testing and racing of that yacht, one might ask just how vital his duties must be as CEO of that company and as a member of the Board of Directors. That might be an interesting question from a shareholder at an upcoming annual meeting …

Honorary degrees at university commencement exercises are nonsensical to begin with – and I use the term “nonsensical” as a way to avoid getting down the level of “bogus”. Vince McMahon got an honorary doctorate this year from a college in Connecticut; Muhammad Ali got an honorary doctorate this year too; neither has a résumé replete with scholarly achievements. But let me focus for a moment on Brown University. This is an Ivy League institution with a lofty reputation for academics and scholarly pursuits by faculty and students. So, what did they do at their commencement?

They gave an honorary doctorate to a Pulitzer Prize winning author, Samantha Power. I have to confess that I do not know Samantha Power – unless she is the sister of former MLB first baseman Vic Power – but the fact that she won a Pulitzer Prize makes such an award appropriate. In addition, they gave an honorary doctorate to a Nobel Prize winner, Craig Melo. The fact that I could not pick Craig Melo out of line-up with Manny, Moe and Jack is irrelevant; a Nobel Prize certainly means that an honorary doctorate is appropriate. Then things got curiouser…

Brown University awarded an honorary doctorate to Chris Berman. I know Chris Berman; I actually enjoy much of his work; I know he is an alum of Brown. Nevertheless, let me channel Bob Uecker here from the movie Major League; he’s just a bit below those other folks on the accomplishments ladder when it comes to scholarly pursuits and/or the enhancement of society and civilization. Can you imagine being the host at a party where you performed this introduction?

“Dr. Berman, may I introduce Dr. Vince McMahon. Dr. McMahon; Dr. Chris Berman.”

I have two additional constructive suggestions for Mark Cuban as he tries to establish the UFL:

1. If you put a franchise in Mexico City, this will not work; but if you have all the teams based in US cities, think about a “regionalized roster system”. Draft only a very few players – say three rounds at the most – where teams can draft any player they want. After that, teams need to build at least 50% of their roster from college conferences that are regional to the place they will play. That will give fans another means of identification with the new teams as they root for players that they may have seen in collegiate careers in nearby venues. You’ll need to assign colleges to your franchises for the purpose of this “regional roster system”.

2. Do not yield to the temptation to make a huge one-time publicity splash by getting into a bidding war for NFL free agents. One of the things that the UFL supposedly will seek is a “salary cap done right”. That makes a lot of sense; be sure that it does not have a loophole in it big enough to drive a bus through. One thing is certain. The NFL and NBA both have salary caps that are easy to get around; a “salary cap done right” would be a bit more rigid.

Do you realize that Jerry Sloan has never been the NBA Coach of the Year? He has been with the Jazz since the 1988/89 season; his overall record through the end of this season is 1035-689; that’s a 60% winning record. He was in Chicago for three seasons prior to his stint in Utah that were undistinguished, but with the Jazz he has coached 19 seasons with only 1 of those seasons showing a losing record. In the spirit of full disclosure, he did also have 1 year with exactly a .500 record. The Jazz have won more than 50 games in 11 of his 19 season there. And he’s never been Coach of the Year?

Finally, a note from the agate type in today’s Washington Post:

“College of Charleston – Named Alice Manard director of sailing.”

Sorry, but I’m unable to identify the person at the University of Montana who holds the same title.

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

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A couple of weeks ago, there was a flurry of discussion about whether or not Barry Bonds would or would not – and should or should not – put some of his memorabilia in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Fortunately, that noise has died down because, quite frankly, it really doesn’t matter all that much. The baseball Hall of Fame is not part of MLB; it is a separate entity. You can argue that Barry Bonds owes something to MLB if you want to make the point that he ought to “give back to the game”. That’s not a particularly compelling topic, but you can formulate some debate around it. But the Baseball Hall of Fame is not “the game”; it’s a stand-alone corporate entity. If you doubt that, consider the following.

The Baseball Hall of Fame has dozens of articles of Pete Rose’s memorabilia; presumably, he is the one who has donated them to the Hall but perhaps other fans have put some there for display. If the Baseball Hall of Fame were actually run by and/or a part of MLB, do you think they’d “allow” those memorabilia in there?

Barry Bonds can do whatever the hell he wants with whatever memorabilia he has amassed during his life. It is not anyone’s business but his. This topic saw the light of day briefly; it should never come up again.

Similarly, any and all further discussion about whether or not Henry Aaron should be in attendance when Bonds sets the all-time home run record should be off-limits. Henry Aaron is an adult; he can – and will – make that decision for himself when the time comes. He does not owe his presence to any one or to any institution. It is his business and his alone. This topic has seen the light of day for much too long already; stifle it.

Obviously, the MLB decision to push back the dates for the World Series such that the Series could extend into November is driven by FOX’s television money. The network wants to start the Series mid-week to increase ratings by avoiding head-to-head games with football as much as possible. That’s fine – except for the fact that Mother Nature may not cooperate. Once you get into late-October/early-November, the weather in a whole lot of baseball cities can be very “baseball unfriendly”. I’m not going to go all climatological on you here, but recall last year’s World Series between Detroit and St. Louis. Can we think back to those games sufficiently to agree that the weather was cold and miserable? If I remember correctly, the playoffs as a whole had more than a few postponements due to rain and cold – weren’t there three rainouts?

So, the bottom line here is simple. In order to try to goose up ratings a tad at the behest of the guys paying the freight, MLB will probably play World Series Games under conditions that would not be tolerated during the regular season and conditions that are not remotely representative of typical baseball games. As to the comfort and pleasure of the fans who purchase tickets to those World Series games …

Raiders’ WR, Jerry Porter, wanted to change his number from 84 to 81. According to one report, Porter said that 81 made him look slimmer and faster; I have to assume that was an attempt at levity on his part. Whatever. It turns out that he’s not going to make the switch, however, because it would cost him more than 200K to do so. Say what?

Well, according to the marketing agreements that exist among the players and the league and the corporate partners that make official jerseys with names on them, if a player changes his number, he has to make some kind of reimbursement to other parties to compensate for the inventory of jersey’s that will no longer be ”official” and “available for sale”. [Aside: I wonder if the teams have to make such payments every time they change their jersey design. Somehow, I doubt that.] Anyway, there must be a significant inventory out there for Raiders jerseys with the number “84” and the name “Porter” atop the number because he would owe more than $200K for making the switch. Maybe if he had caught more than one pass for all of last season there would be a smaller “unsold inventory”?

File this under the heading, Where Are They Now? In 1999, Akili Smith was the #3 overall pick in the draft. The Browns took Tim Couch first; the Eagles took Donovan McNabb second; the Bengals then took Smith at #3 as a highly athletic quarterback from Oregon. To say he never lived up to his lofty draft status would be the understatement of the year; he stunk in Cincy and then went on to try to catch on with a couple of other teams in the NFL. I recall that Tampa Bay gave him a look and finally released him; I think there were other teams too.

Anyhow, Akili Smith is back in football. He signed on with the Calgary Stampeders in the CFL. According to the Stampeders’ website, he went into camp as the #4 QB on the squad behind Henry Burris, Ryan Cubit and Barrick Nealy. Calgary opens its CFL season on 15 June hosting the Edmonton Eskimos. Akili Smith has nine more days to move up on that depth chart…

According to an AP report today, the Miami Dolphins and the KC Chiefs have finally come to terms on a trade for Trent Green. The report says that the deal is not official yet but it seems as if the only obstacle is that Green has to take a physical in Miami. I believe the negotiations and the posturing surrounding this transaction took more time than it took raise up the Rocky Mountains, but I could be wrong here.

When Dennis Green was fired in Minnesota, someone asked where he’d go next and Green’s response was that you could find him where he always was – on the high road. Well, if Dennis Green is on the high road, he better keep an eye out so that he doesn’t run into Marty Schottenheimer. The Chargers fired Schottenheimer four months ago after a 14-2 season last year and a combined 35-13 record over the last three seasons. And for four months, I’ve not seen a single report of Schottenheimer blasting the organization or the GM or the owner in San Diego. That’s traveling on the high road.

Do a Google Images search for “Olympic London Logo”. Find the one for the 2012 games that looks like a jigsaw puzzle for the numbers 2012. Enlarge it and you’ll get an idea what the London Olympic organizers think is an attractive logo for the games. It’s not. But here’s the kicker. According to Elliot Harris in the Chicago Sun-Times, the organizing committee paid someone $796K to come up with that design. For a lot less money, they could have had the kids at some high school come up with designs that they could pick from. For a prize of $1K they would have to have gotten better designs to choose from. I hope the organizing committee at least got kissed during this process.

Finally, a note from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“True story. Pamela Anderson is dating San Diego Chargers long-snapper David Binn. Please make up your own punch line. Mine might get me fired.”

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

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Several weeks ago as the NFL was considering the Dallas bid to host the Super Bowl in the Cowboys’ new playpen, I mentioned that there were rumors that Jerry Jones wanted to bring the Cotton Bowl to his new stadium and to restore the Cotton Bowl to it historically prominent place in the college football bowl picture. Well, that’s happened. The Cotton Bowl will happen in the new stadium on 2 January 2010. The hope is that the BCS will expand to include at least one more game sometime in the future and the Cotton Bowl hopes to be on the short list to join the BCS power rotation if that happens. Playing in a new stadium that can seat close to 100,000 folks will not hurt their chances.

Oh, and Jerry Jones has also landed the Big 12 Championship Game for the new stadium for 2009 and again in 2010. There’s a double-edged sword for Jones in that game. Look at what happened to the ACC last year when it played its championship game at a “neutral site” and wound up with two non-traditional teams in the game. The stadium could not have been half-full. If that happens to the Big 12 Championship game – say a confrontation between Missouri and Baylor – there might be lots of empty seats for the game. We shall see on that one…

I made some snide remarks about Mark Cuban and his UFL idea. To be fair, there are a few things he – and his deep pockets co-investors – might do to get the league started on a positive track to build a following and to generate revenues. Cuban is correct to identify the American appetite for football as huge and growing. So in the spirit of magnanimity, let me offer some opinions and advice to these folks on what might work and what might not:

1. Do not go head-to-head with the NFL from day one. If you want to avoid being a “spring league”, start your season in June – before NFL teams go to training camp – and end the season with a simple playoff structure around October 1. Imagine the marketing advantage the UFL could have in July and August when the NFL is trying to promote entirely meaningless Exhibition Games and the UFL teams are making their playoff runs… Yes, I know this would put the UFL in direct competition with the CFL for time and attention; that should not be a huge problem south of the Canadian border.

2. Put the first tranche of teams in cities where there are no existing NFL teams. [This is a corollary to the first suggestion that the UFL not go head-to-head with the NFL from day one.] That gives the UFL a way to enter the Los Angeles and Las Vegas markets right away. Assuming an eight-team league at first the UFL might want to fire one shot across the bow of the NFL and put a franchise in Mexico City. It would certainly seem as if the NFL has designs on establishing itself there with “overseas games”; the UFL could be a permanent presence there from the outset. Just a thought…

3. Other cities without NFL teams that could support UFL teams might include Orlando, Sacramento, San Antonio, Birmingham and Oklahoma City.

4. Here’s a philosophical question for the league organizers. If you are going to put your initial franchises in cities with no NFL presence, can you still consider putting teams in Detroit, Cleveland, Phoenix and/or Oakland? Just asking…

5. Do not play in cavernous stadiums at first. If you want to look like a successful sporting venture on TV, you cannot have your games played under conditions where 70% of the seats are empty. The UFL will need to establish itself in terms of public credibility; empty seats make many folks believe the game on TV is some kind of bush league that has no future.

Let me change gears here and refer to the now infamous play by Alex Rodriguez where he shouted something at an opposing third baseman causing him to drop an easy pop fly. A reader sent me a note citing Rule 7-09 (d) which the reader said prohibits a base runner from doing anything to “confuse, hinder or add to the difficulty of the fielders…” He said A-Rod should have been called out immediately; he then went on to say that if it were any team but the Yankees, that would have been the call. I do not buy into the “Yankee conspiracy theories” even a little bit so I immediately ignored that. But I do have a long-term friend and former colleague who umpired baseball for about 30 years. I always defer to him on questions about the rulebook and here was his reply to me on this matter:

“Yes there is a rule to that effect … as with most rules; judgment is involved in the enforcement decision. There are some egregious circumstances under which it would be enforced. For example, a runner retired on a force play at second continues running to third to draw a throw. If such a move affected the defense, the umpires would call the ball dead and do whatever to remedy the situation.

“The A Rod yell was a bush league move that I’ve seen many times in amateur baseball and have never called nor would any other umpire. He would have had to make a much more overt attempt to interfere for it to be called.”

The Asheville Tourists play in the Class A South Atlantic League. They have a “Bark at the Park” day scheduled where fans can bring their dogs to the park and they’ll give out Frisbees to dog owners and stuff like that. I’d be willing to wager that neither Michael Vick nor Clinton Portis will be invited to throw out the first pitch or sing Take Me Out To The Ballgame that night…

Finally, here’s some commentary from Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle:

“I will donate $100 to the ASPCA chapter in the first city that hosts the Atlanta Falcons and, when the Falcons’ offense takes the field, the PA system plays How Much is That Doggie in the Window?”

“Sadly, the Falcons don’t play at Cleveland, so we won’t get to see Vick greeted by the Dawg Pound.

“Maybe I’m too hard on Mike Vick. Maybe it’s just my frustration. I’m having a lousy season in my dog-fighting fantasy league.”

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

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CBSportsline.com reports that Billy Donovan has not actually signed his contract with the Orlando Magic and that he may be thinking about going back to the University of Florida. I understand the lure of an NBA job in terms of a guaranteed contract worth somewhere north of $25M, but it isn’t as if Donovan was making minimum wage at Florida. I hope this situation does not turn into some long and drawn out brouhaha where we get to hear and read psychological analyses of Donovan that have all the depth of a parking lot puddle.

Elsewhere in NBA doings, the Charlotte Bobcats hired Rod Higgins away from the Warriors to be the Bobcats’ new GM. In Michael Jordan’s previous incarnation as an NBA front office executive, he hired Higgins to do something in the Wizards’ front office. Since Jordan made all the decisions in that situation, it was never really clear what Higgins did in Washington but here is a fact. He was there when the decisions were made to hire Leonard Hamilton as the coach and to draft Kwame Brown with the overall #1 pick in the draft. What role Higgins played in those decisions is completely mysterious, but the fact is that he did not talk the rest of the front office out of them. Bobcats’ fans had best hope that he is not around for anything similar in Charlotte.

Interestingly, about three of four days after Higgins was hired in Charlotte the Golden State Warriors announced that they were not going to replace him in their front office. That not only has to make me wonder what he might have been doing for the Warriors but it also has to make me wonder how vital the functions of the job he was supposed to be doing might have been…

You may recall that I told you about a recent NCAA study that took 16 years to determine that the injury rates for football and men’s hockey were higher than for other collegiate sports. Well, if you think the conclusions there were patently obvious, check out the latest flight of fancy by the NCAA. Last week, the NCAA announced the formation of a study panel whose members will include coaches, athletic directors, college presidents and “others” to shed light on the issues surrounding - - drum roll please - - why collegiate men’s basketball players experience deficient academic achievement. In announcing the birthing of this panel, Dr. Myles Brand said that their charter was wide-ranging and that “nothing will be off the table.”

Memo to Dr. Myles Brand (and his faithful sidekick, Captain Obvious):

1. Many men’s basketball players are academically deficient in college because they have been “passed along” in their high schools due to their athletic prowess. They are the academic equivalent of a talented seventh grade student.

2. Many men’s basketball players have the NBA as their goal in life (realistic or unrealistic as that may be) and have zero interest in academics.

3. Many men’s basketball players do not belong in college anywhere for any reason other than to play basketball.

4. If your study panel finds anything contrary to points 1-3 above, check to see what was in those brownies they ate at lunchtime.

Some folks in the Washington DC area are trying to put the pieces together to get yet another bowl game on the NCAA schedule. Rumor has it that they would hope to play their inaugural game after the 2008 college football season; the game would be held in RFK Stadium. I can’t begin to tell you how bad an idea this is. So let me just tick off a couple of items:

There are already too many bowl games. This one would attract two teams with all the cachet of a bovine bowel movement.

Washington DC in late December is a dreary place to be.

RFK Stadium is a horrible venue. The only reason it is not the worst baseball stadium in the country in 2007 is because Shea Stadium is still standing.

There is some fluttering about that this putative new bowl game would have some kind of tie-in with Navy. That might help since Navy would draw a crowd in the DC area, but one has to wonder why Navy might be interested. As long as Navy has a good team and is bowl eligible, it has the choice of lots of the second-tier bowl games because lots of the games realize that Navy will sell tickets in lots of bowl venues. So why would Navy tie itself down to a single bowl game in a dreary locale to be played in a bleak stadium? I don’t get it … Oh and by the way if the bowl game had such a tie-in with Navy, what might happen if Navy were not eligible for a bowl game some year?

Because there are so many mismatches on the college football scene, it is hard to pick out the biggest scheduling mistake in any given year. However, this year one might point to Penn State as having a non-conference schedule that is just a tad softer than one might expect from a school with the football tradition of the Nittany Lions. In 2007, Penn State will play Florida International, Buffalo and Temple. Granted the fourth non-conference game is against Notre Dame, but those other three games should be embarrassing to the school.

Here’s a public service announcement for you. June is Celibacy Awareness Month. Here’s a guess. Adolescents and adults who are celibate are already aware of what that means…

Finally, Greg Cote had this item in the Miami Herald about a week ago:

“The Ottawa-Anaheim Stanley Cup Finals starts Monday, and Vegas odds are out: The likelihood of this drawing a big national TV rating is slightly less than the probability that global warming will melt both rinks and cancel the series.”

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

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