The Sports Curmudgeon

Folks:

I will be off the air for the rest of this week. The rant just below this entry will be the last one until at least next Monday.

The company that has been providing me with my Internet access here at our vacation home is going out of business on 31 July and the soonest I can possibly get a new connection is Friday 3 August. If everything went perfectly - and these kinds of things never seem to do that - the best I could hope for would be for my connection to be up and running effectively sometime next weekend.

I’ll be back as soon as I can. Trust me, I’ll miss writing these things far more than anyone will miss reading them…

Be well. Stay well.

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A couple of days ago, I posed a proposition bet setting the over/under time at 60 days until some Congressthing would call for an investigation of the NBA. I took UNDER; it seems to have happened already. Congressman Rush from Illinois is the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection. In that capacity, he has formally requested that David Stern come to DC to meet with him to discuss the NBA’s operations, procedures and security. I do not doubt that this could be a prelude to some hearings down the road and I find it mildly amusing that one of the things this subcommittee seeks to enhance is “Consumer Protection”. I wonder if they feel a need to protect the bettor who is getting down on NBA games with the local bookie. Is that the consumer who needs protection here - - or is it the bookie?

Mark Cuban thinks that publicity and notoriety is good for the league. He said so when Kobe Bryant was on trial; that event would get people talking about the NBA and might get some folks interested enough to tune in and check out the product. That was far-fetched back then but I wonder if he thinks all the attention being give to the Tim Donaghy situation is good for the league. It is not.

It took me until I had seen the 973rd replay of David Stern’s news conference last week to realize something about his statement. David Stern is a lawyer; he is certainly not a dolt, and he is extremely savvy in the ways of public relations. Given all of those things, he referred to Tim Donaghy as a “rogue isolated criminal”. For a lawyer to jump to that characterization of someone who had not yet been arrested let alone indicted or tried is really surprising. If anyone should be sensitive to “due process”, it ought to be David Stern.

Congressman Waxman of California obviously does not want to be overshadowed by Congressman Rush when it comes to investigations into “sporting matters”. Congressman Waxman has asked for the records of the WWE related to that organization’s steroid testing programs and policies. I certainly hope he will not feign surprise to learn that some of the folks in pro wrestling take steroids…

ESPN had a NASCAR race on this weekend. Brent Musberger called the race and Suzy Kolber was the studio anchor for the pre-race coverage. I did not watch all of the pre-race show and I tuned into the race only briefly, but I thought Suzy Kolber acquitted herself very well as the studio anchor while Musberger’s “contrived dramatics” style of broadcasting just didn’t work for me in terms of an auto race. ESPN will have five or six more races and then ABC will pick up ESPN for the “Chase for the Cup” races later in the year. Since Musberger will normally have college football duties at that time of year, I wonder if he’ll stay with NASCAR or if he’ll go back to college football.

In case you are itching for the NFL season to start and just cannot wait to get down some action on NFL football, you can wager now on the upcoming Super Bowl in February 2008. The line at the moment is AFC Champ – 7.5 over NFC Champ. Oh, and the over/under for the game is 47.5.

Nike, Rebok and the NFL have all taken steps to halt sales of any Michael Vick “stuff”. This is similar to what happened in the “Don Imus affair” last spring; sponsors decided they didn’t want to be associated with him and began to jump ship; that’s when Don Imus had his program canceled. Someone who is advising Michael Vick might want to walk him through what happened there; Vick’s net worth is about to take a major drop.

There is a real lesson for folks wrapped up in the Michael Vick situation and it seems clear that some folks need to learn from it. Michael Vick is indeed innocent until proven guilty; that is his Constitutional right; it must not be abridged. The US Government is required to take its evidence to a Federal Court and to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Michael Vick is guilty of the charges they have brought against him. Only if they are successful in that endeavor can Michael Vick properly be called a felon. How-evah … [/Stephen A. Smith]

In the much informal “court of public opinion” there is no need to have evidence convince the public to nearly that strict a standard for said “court of public opinion” to render a verdict. It seems to be doing just that at this moment; and in so doing, it violates exactly NONE of Michael Vick’s Constitutional rights. He has a Constitutional right to a speedy trial and a fair trial and all that stuff; he has exactly no Constitutional right to endorse athletic gear or to profit from such endorsements. He has no Constitutional right to play pro football. Those are privileges he earned by his talents. Privileges are earned and can be revoked; rights are “inalienable” and devolve to people because the rights are “endowed by their Creator.” That’s a stunningly big distinction that some folks just don’t seem to get.

Very soon after last year’s NFL season was over, Jim Mora Jr. was fired as the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. That had to be a less than wonderful time in his life. But I wonder if he looks back on those dark days from the perspective of July 2007 and says to himself, “Maybe it wasn’t all that bad to get out of town back there in January…”

The NFL Network is developing a college football show that reportedly will air daily. That’s a natural thing for the NFL Network to put on the air; it relates very well to the NFL product. What is a bit discomforting to learn is that the NFL is looking to add content to its line-up and is considering adding more high school football games to their programming mix. They already do a high school All-Star football game; now they want to see if they can strike a deal with some Texas high school football teams to televise some of their games. I know High School football is very big in Texas – and other parts of the southeastern US – but somehow I can’t bring myself to think that this is a completely good thing to have happen.

Finally, here’s Greg Cote of the Miami Herald summarizing the state of sports in late July 2007:

“Just woke up from the weirdest dream. [Michael] Vick, [Barry] Bonds and defrocked NBA ref Tim Donaghy were furiously pedaling up the Alps in the Tour de France.”

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

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Well, the precincts have reported; the numbers are in. As usual, you can look at the glass as half-full or half-empty. ESPN televised the David Beckham inaugural MLS contest with the LA Galaxy playing FC Chelsea. ESPN hyped the game at least as much as they have ever hyped a soccer game; I’ll be surprised if they hype any other MLS game to the same extent in the next year; no one who reads sports pages anywhere in the US was unaware of the David Beckham arrival. The game drew a rating of 1.0. That means that just under 950,000 households tuned in.

The soccer-bashers will see the glass has half-empty. Recall that the XFL went off the air because its ratings plummeted to 2.0; realize that pro wrestling on cable TV routinely draws ratings of 2.0 – 3.0; the women’s NCAA final game this year (Rutgers/Tennessee) pulled down a rating of 1.0. Soccer-bashers will note absolutely correctly that pro wrestling and women’s college basketball are not big time sports in the US and so the portrait of David Beckham as the “Savior of Soccer” is nothing more than wishful thinking. The soccer-bashers have a point.

The soccer-lovers – after they get over the outrage they always feel when anyone says anything negative about soccer – will look at the ratings and say that these are much higher than the ratings ESPN drew for earlier MLS games this season and that it was the most widely viewed MLS game ever on TV and that this was an exhibition game which counted for exactly nothing. So, they will see this as an uptrend and they will point to the large crowd in attendance and the presence of lots of celebrities in the audience as a sign that soccer is indeed about to emerge onto the large stage of US sports. Other than the nonsense about the celebrities in attendance – most of whom were there to “be seen at the game” and not to “see the game” – the soccer-lovers too have a point.

But one cannot ignore the data. Nationwide, less than one million TV sets tuned in to see the first of David Beckham’s games in MLS. That’s about the level of nationwide interest you see in Arena Football. That’s about the number of people who will pay about $50 to watch Wrestlemania on pay-per-view. So, the objective now for MLS – and for ESPN as their broadcasting partner – is to grow the nationwide interest in soccer to the point where its “numbers” rivals pro wrestling; TV ratings will indicate their progress toward that goal.

Soccer-optimists and soccer-pessimists need to keep one thing in mind:

The Ultimate Optimist is a person who can think of a diaper as half-empty.

Speaking of numbers, I had a discussion with some friends the other night about the Hot Dog Eating Championship earlier this month. The thrust of the discussion is not relevant here but it reminded me that the winner of that event ate more than 60 hot dogs – and buns – in 12 MINUTES. I’ve reviewed my personal hot dog eating numbers and have made a linear projection. I can now make this announcement:

I will NOT eat 60 hot dogs in the 12 MONTHS that will comprise calendar year 2007.

As you know, I think PETA is a fringe organization made up of annoying people. I do not think that the Humane Society is a fringe organization despite the fact that they and PETA are on the same side of the dogfighting issue. So, when the Humane Society says that dogfighting is a “popular subculture among NFL players”, that should make the league and the union and the teams sit up and take notice. If there are even a couple of other NFL players involved in raising/breeding/training dogs for the purpose of dogfighting, it behooves NFL Security to identify them long before the Feds identify them.

The next time someone tries to rationalize dogfighting as some kind of cultural “thing” in America, think about this. If dogfighting was not so abhorrent and was nearly as important a “cultural expression” as the rationalizers want to make it out to be, then at least one major political candidate would embrace it as a way to reach out to that segment of the electorate. We have a boatload of presidential aspirants in both major political parties at the moment and I’m willing to go out on a limb here and say that none of them will support dogfighting anywhere on the arc of their campaigns. The people rationalizing dogfighting are exercising their right to free political expression, which must not be curtailed. They are also exercising their right to demonstrate that they are misguided fools; that too is a right that must not be curtailed; we really do need to know who the misguided fools are.

USC women’s basketball player, Brynn Cameron, is now the mother of Matt Leinart’s son, Cole. The young couple broke up prior to the birth of the child; recent events indicate that the bloom is definitely off the rose here. Cameron has gone to court to ask for $30K a month from Leinart; currently, Leinart supposedly is giving her $6K a month to raise Cole. Now Leinart supposedly will instigate a custody battle. The first round of this confrontation will happen on 13 August.

When I read the first note on this, I figured that $30K a month was such an excessive number for “child support” that it was just a negotiating ploy. However, an acquaintance of mine is an attorney who used to practice in California. She told me that California law and practice is to base child support payments on the income level of the parent providing the support and not on the basis of reasonable and customary living expenses.

So, Cameron is asking for $360K per year. Leinart’s contract with the Cardinals is reportedly worth about $50M over six years (counting in the option year) plus whatever money he might pull in from endorsements. So, over the six years of that contract, Cameron would be asking him to fork over a little more than 4% of his gross income (not counting endorsement money). Putting that into a perspective that ordinary folks might relate to, that means if Leinart were making $100K a year, Cameron would be asking him to pay her just over $4K a year, which is $350 a month. That’s not as outrageous as it sounded at first…

Finally, here’s an item from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald earlier this month:

“The US fencing summer nationals conclude today in Miami Beach. The event has generated an estimated 450 stories beamed nationwide by the media, 446 of which referenced the word ‘Zorro.’ “

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

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Arthur Blank has to be wondering why he stopped selling paint, dry wall, tools and lawn mowers to the general public to take up the job of owning a football team. Today his franchise quarterback has a date in Federal District Court that will keep him away from training camp and may keep him away from the team for a very long time if things don’t work out well. And today, the Falcons announced that their best running back, Warrick Dunn, had to undergo surgery last weekend on his back to take care of a herniated disk. Last year, the Falcons’ depth chart was Vick and Dunn; now it is Harrington and Norwood. That’s not as bad for Atlanta as the arrival of William Tecumseh Sherman, but it’s not good.

I wonder what the sentiment is in Chicago at the moment given the news that Lance Briggs has signed his one-year contract with the Bears and will report to training camp on time. On one hand, Bears’ fans can see a quality linebacker coming back to the team and to an already strong defense that got the team to the Super Bowl last year. On the other hand, they now have someone in the locker room who is clearly a poser. Lance Briggs swore up and down in myriad radio and TV interviews that he would never play another down for the Chicago Bears and that he was prepared to sit out all season and that he had set aside the money he needed to live and all that stuff. Remember how he and his smarmy agent, Drew Rosenhaus, orchestrated that carnival act? Well, he signed exactly the deal he found so offensive that it foisted that carnival act on all of us. The poor man will have to play this season for only $7.2M in salary. Obviously, he needs a hug…

Two seasons ago, Priest Holmes took a hit that looked as if it could have killed him. He has been out of football since then but now it seems as if those “head and neck trauma” injuries have healed sufficiently that Holmes will be in the Chiefs’ training camp this week. Holmes is 34 years old and has not played football for two years now; this will be an interesting comeback attempt – and there is a touch of irony to it. When the Chiefs drafted Larry Johnson, part of their motivation was to gain some leverage over Priest Holmes in a protracted contract negotiation. Now, Johnson is holding out on the Chiefs and demanding a new contract while Holmes announces his surprising return to the team.

Despite flagging TV ratings in other sports, the NFL juggernaut rolls on. According to reports, sales of advertising slots for NFL games this year are ahead of where they were last year at this time and the networks are able to charge slightly more for those slots this year than last. Supposedly, MNF has sold 70% of its slots already while the other networks have sold just over 60% of their slots. Viewers need not worry about any kind of advertising revolution here that might upset their viewing habits. Beer companies and car manufacturers will once again dominate the ad slots.

The Manchester United Football Club is involved in two situations that have “soap opera” written all over them. The team is trying to acquire an Argentinean player from the West Ham United team. They have agreed to the transfer price but the deal is held up while FIFA sends the case to the international Court of Arbitration for Sport. The issue here is who will get the approximately $60M transfer fee that Manchester United is willing to pay. West Ham United says it should get the money and that would seem to make some sense. But the player’s agent, Kia Joorabchian, asserts that he owns the player’s financial rights and that he – not the player nor the West Ham United team – should get the money. That should be an interesting argument before that tribunal.

Concurrent with its attempt to acquire a player, Manchester United is struggling to find a way to keep one its players from going to a rival club. Gabriel Heinze is a defender on the Manchester team and rival Liverpool has offered $14M to acquire Heinze. Manchester United is fighting to prevent that from happening claiming that there is a clause in Heinze’s contract that forbids him from joining a team that has a legitimate chance to win the championship of the English Premier League. [Yeah, I know; I thought I had misread that item the first time I came across it too.] Obviously, I don’t know if such a clause is in Heinze’s contract; but if it is, I’d have to question why his agent allowed such a clause to get in there in the first place and why Heinze ever signed it. Can you imagine Scott Boras giving a baseball team control over where his client may or may not sign in free agency based on how good the other team is?

By now, you have to know that Barry Bonds’ former paramour, Kimberley Bell, will tell all and bare all for Playboy magazine later this year. Frankly, I don’t care even a little bit about that, but the US Attorneys who continue to pursue Bonds for issues related to the BALCO matter and tax evasion and perjury and whatever can’t be thrilled about this. If they have to call Ms. Bell as a witness, a significant part of the impact of her testimony will rest on her credibility. The defense will likely try to paint her as a bitter and scorned woman who is nothing but a gold-digger. Whether she is or not is irrelevant; the fact that she is getting paid to pose nude for Playboy indicates that she is willing to cash in on her 15 minutes of fame. That cannot help the prosecution.

Oh, by the way, if Kimberley Bell dishes some dirt to Playboy about how Bonds used steroids and/or any other performance enhancing substances, would it be fair to investigate whether or not there were any “image enhancing” substances/procedures involved in her nude photo shoot? Just asking…

The Lowell Spinners are a minor league baseball team in the New York-Penn League. They had a wonderful promotion earlier this week; they had Political Correctness Night. The team promised not to offend anyone on that night. Bases were not going to be identified as first, second or third because that might cause feelings of inferiority in the people seated near third base. Players would be identified in gender-neutral terms such as second-baseperson (I hope he will not feel inferior to the first-baseperson but that’s not so important because he’s a player and not a fan.) And to assure that everyone who participated in the wacky between-innings contests/races/etc felt fulfilled, all contestants received “participation trophies”. Isn’t that just swell…?

Eric Staal plays hockey for the Carolina Hurricanes; his brother Jordan plays for the Pittsburgh Penguins. They were arrested in Minnesota last night on charges of disorderly conduct when things got very loud at Eric Staal’s bachelor party. These are misdemeanor charges of no consequence and I mention it only because it sets up the following …

Finally, here’s an item from Jerry Greene in the Orlando Sentinel:

“Breaking news: The wizards at EA Sports announce Eric Staal will be on the cover of NHL 08. I knew you’d want to know.

“More breaking news: In a news conference today, EA Sports will tell us who Eric Staal is.”

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

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As I was doing my reading today, I came across an excellent column by Bernie Lincicome in the Rocky Mountain News on the subject of the integrity of the NBA and what David Stern’s news conference yesterday tried to achieve. I commend this column to your reading.

The gist of Lincicome’s column is that the NBA has to do more than hold news conferences and say that this is a dark day for the league and that similar things have happened to other organizations that supposedly hire and retain people of impeccable character and trustworthiness. And, Messr. Lincicome is absolutely correct. Maybe David Stern did not say anything about what the NBA is going to do to make all of this better in the future because the FBI asked him not to do that; I can’t see why the FBI would ask such a thing, but it’s possible. Maybe David Stern did not say anything about what the NBA is going to do to make all of this better in the future because he and some trusted colleagues are in the midst of figuring all of that out but they aren’t finished yet. Or maybe David Stern did not say anything about what the NBA is going to do to make all of this better in the future because he has no idea what to do. I don’t read minds, but my guess is that the last hypothesis is the most likely one.

I got in trouble in the past for saying what I am going to say here, but it is appropriate to this situation.

Integrity is like virginity; you only get to lose it once.

Folks, the integrity of the NBA is now seriously in question. This is a league that has been having image and ratings problems in the past 5-7 years; yet the league officials – usually in the person of the Commissioner – were always aloof and unconcerned about any of them. No matter what criticism nor whatever the data, the NBA always intimated that it knew something that the public and the press didn’t know that made whatever anyone was worried about a trifling matter. That’s why I called David Stern the Viscount of Verisimilitude earlier today.

Yesterday, David Stern had to admit publicly and on tape that he had no idea any of this was going on until the FBI called him to schedule an appointment to talk to him and league officials about the investigation that the FBI had underway. Then he proceeded to say at least a half-dozen times that based on what the FBI had explained to him, Tim Donaghy was the only person associated with the NBA who might be guilty of wrongdoing. But David Stern really does not know if that is actually the case…

To use Al Gore’s recent phraseology, David Stern has to deal with “An Inconvenient Truth”. Actually, there are several related inconvenient truths here:

Truth # 1: The FBI is investigating Donaghy for activities associated with the 2005/06 season and the 2006/07 season. The NBA has been in the dark about alleged misdeeds for almost 2 years now.

Truth #2: Despite all the security procedures and all the background checks and all the monitoring processes that the NBA nominally has in place, it didn’t know that Tim Donaghy was betting on NBA games until June 20, 2007 - - unless of course David Stern lied about that fact in his news conference which would ruin his credibility related to any other part of this matter.

Truth #3: The people who are responsible for Security in the NBA – those professionals with backgrounds in the FBI and Homeland Security and police departments and DEA – failed to determine what was going on here and to warn the Commissioner that he needed to call the FBI in – not get a call from the FBI.

Truth #4: The personnel system struck out. It is supposed to monitor the performance on the job for officials and to include quality control checks and constant assessment of each referee’s performance on the court. What kind of marks would you be giving those folks today? The NBA has received questions about the way it assigns officials and rates officials over the years but has always maintained that the process was best kept in-house but that their processes were extensive and effective and efficient. Yeah, right!

Truth #5: Because David Stern does not know how all of this came about, he cannot tell the fans that this was a one-time event and that it will never happen again. He will try to do that at some later date, but it will all be smoke and mirrors. At the end of the day, the NBA will most likely put in place a system to catch the next referee who tries to do exactly what Tim Donaghy is alleged to have done here. But it will not catch a future Joe Flabeetz who may try to do something equally nefarious in a totally different way and for different reasons.

David Stern surely does not want my advice on this matter but I’ll provide it anyway at no charge. One of the “buzzwords” of 2007 is “accountability” and there are lots of folks in the NBA’s security and operations and personnel hierarchies that need to be held accountable. That means the services of those folks are no longer essential to the NBA; if David Stern doesn’t make that decision and act on it, then he too may need to find other employment.

Before anyone gets the idea that I am picking on David Stern here, let me say that it was a Federal investigation that opened up the BALCO situation and brought baseball’s steroid use to light. The MLB security folks missed that one by a mile. And it was a criminal investigation – first by some seemingly less than fully competent locals and then by the DoJ – that surfaced the dogfighting activities that seem to have been ongoing on property owned by Michael Vick in Virginia. The highly acclaimed NFL Security operatives seem never to have gotten wind of that business over several years. Personnel security is a tough business but major sports in the US are also multi-billion dollar businesses and it seems as if the folks who are supposed to assure its integrity aren’t doing all that well recently.

There was a movie made about the 1919 Black Sox Scandal; it was called Eight Men Out. When they make a movie about l’affaire Donaghy, perhaps they will give it the title Over/Under. I officiated basketball for 37 years – never anywhere near the NBA level to be sure – but I do know something about officiating. It would be difficult for a single official in a three-person crew to determine the outcome of a game; it would be easier – but certainly not trivial – for a single official to assure that a team covered or did not cover a spread. I think the easiest thing for an official to do in terms of tilting the scale relative to a betting situation would be to favor the OVER in totals betting.

If an official were to call a very tight game, that would tend to get the players to back off a bit on defense – and for coaches to tell them to watch out because the official has a quick whistle tonight – meaning more open scoring opportunities. Also, a tight game tends to have more fouls meaning that scoring happens with the clock stopped and teams get into the bonus sooner. If one wanted to bias a game toward the OVER, that’s one way to do it relatively unobtrusively.

If one wanted to bias a game toward the UNDER, there might be a lot of offensive fouls called along with three-second violations and other calls to consume time without having the ball go through the basket. The problem with trying to manipulate UNDERs is that overtime is a killer here and a single official might not be able to prevent overtime.

And since I mentioned “Over/Under Wagers”, let me pose a proposition here:

Time until some blowhard Congressthing expressing outrage – I say OUTRAGE – at this assault on basketball fandom calls for Congressional hearings on the matter: 60 days.

I’ll take UNDER…

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

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The oddest sporting event for yesterday was David Stern’s news conference. What makes it odd was that David Stern did not conduct the session with a smirk on his face and a demeanor that intended to show everyone present that he was the smartest person in the zip code at the moment – and probably for many moments to come. The Count of Condescension, the Earl of Egotism, the Sultan of Smug and the Viscount of Vainglory stood there in the full awareness that no matter how much he tap danced around the questions or how much he tried to imply that he really did have all the answers but wouldn’t reveal them, it wasn’t gonna work this time.

He said that betrayal has happened to other organizations where people in trusted positions had turned on those organizations; he mentioned the CIA and the FBI specifically. Then he tried to justify the soundness of NBA Security by saying that the league hired people with FBI and CIA experience. Excuse me, but if the bad apples in those organizations are your rationalizations regarding why it took an outside organization to ferret out your internal problem child, then you can’t hold up alumni of those organizations as the gold standard for security. You can have it either way - - but not both.

The NBA will have to find a way to improve its internal security procedures – and notice that David Stern did not say that the NBA was already doing that. Surely, this is something that he would have trumpeted if they actually were. No one asked him what the league was waiting for so of course he didn’t explain. Here is one small portion of their problem; the NBA like many other organizations suffers from the syndrome that allows Person A to occupy a position of authority and control on the basis of whom Person A happens to know in the NBA hierarchy - - and not on the basis of Person A’s actual knowledge, skills and abilities to perform the functions of that job excellently.

I don’t expect David Stern to start asking any probing questions of the people in positions of authority and control within the NBA for a couple of reasons. First, it’s not clear to me he knows any probing questions to ask of the folks who are supposed to provide quality control oversight for the on-court actions of the referees. Secondly, if he starts doing that, he might have to extend those probing questions to folks who are in positions only because he put them there. And that will not be something the Viscount of Vainglory will deign to do.

Elliott Harris had this comment in the Chicago Sun-Times yesterday – before David Stern’s news conference:

“The delay in NBA commissioner David Stern holding a news conference to discuss former referee Tim Donaghy’s case of betting on games? Must have been waiting for Vegas to set the over/under for other league officials involved in such activities.”

By the way, it is important that you remember an under-reported fact related to this matter because it will become relevant sometime in the near future. When NFL referees botch calls really badly, there are dozens of commentators whose immediate response is along the lines of: “When in the name of everything that is good and holy will the NFL hire full time referees who are part of the league and under their control/tutelage all year round?”

Memo to Knee-Jerkers: The NBA hires its officials exactly the way you want the NFL to hire them. The mode of hiring does NOT assure on-court/on-field competence nor does it assure the integrity of the corps of officials.

With the MLB trading deadline fast approaching, lots of commentators have focused on the Rangers’ Mark Teixiera as one of the plums out there to be plucked by a contending team. To be sure, Teixiera is a fine player and his contract extends through the 2008 season, but there are three things that could give an acquiring team pause:

1. The Rangers need to get more than one top prospect in return to jump-start their less than spectacular farm system; and preferably, those prospects would be pitchers. Most teams are not willing to part with top quality pitching prospects.

2. Teixiera is a first baseman and most of the contending teams have that position covered. The Braves are the only contending team where Teixiera would be an improvement of several quantum levels.

3. Texiera’s agent is Scott Boras so any acquiring team may be certain that he will not be signing a long-term contract extension and that Boras will ask for a minimum of $20 per year for Teixiera when he is a free agent. Teixiera is affordable now; he’s not a two-month player rental; he’s more like a player with a long-term lease in place; but the balloon payment at the end of that lease if you want to keep him might approach the GDP of a West African nation.

The NL Central is a pathetic division this year. According to my morning paper, four of the six teams are below .500 and three of the teams – half the division – are 14 or more games under .500. Someone will win that division and make the playoffs; that team might get hot in October and move on. But we have to recognize and acknowledge that the teams at the top of the NL Central got to play an unusually weak schedule this year and that whatever their record might be at the end of September, it would likely have been worse had they been in a different division.

When NFL training camp opens, that means the first of the Exhibition Games – the Hall of Fame Game – cannot be more than two weeks away. This year, it will be on 5 August and it will be telecast on NFL Network. In addition, NFL Network will telecast eight other Exhibition Games live and on a national basis AND the network will also show 45 Exhibition Games on tape delay. Some of those games will air starting around midnight here in the Eastern Time zone so they won’t be horribly convenient in terms of watching them and being a functional and social being on the next day. Watch any or all of these games at your pleasure but please do not succumb to the temptation to wager on these games just because they are on TV and you’ll get to see them live or on tape. If you find yourself even thinking along those lines, seek help immediately.

Here’s a public service announcement; you may need to take a few moments to prepare for this. July 27 is Take Your Houseplant For A Walk Day; and simultaneously, it is National Walk On Stilts Day. Celebrating those two things together might take a bit of practice so I thought I’d give you a few days advance notice…

Finally, here’s a comment from Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Good news for the Bengals: When just-released linebacker Odell Thurman was accused of kicking and hitting two men in a bar fight, police reports made no mention of illegal use or misuse of dogs, drugs, weapons or women.”

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

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Every team in the NFL has “re-tooled” for the upcoming 2007 season. To go through all 32 teams and to comment on the implications of whatever moves they have made would be a longer document than I really w