The Sports Curmudgeon®

While the argument rages about whether or not Roger Goodell was too lenient in his punishment of Bill Belichick and/or the Pats, let me reiterate my position. The NFL has shown that it cares less about violation of this rule than it does violations of its rules on substance abuse or “personal conduct”. Those can get you suspended from the NFL up to “indefinitely.” I don’t want to belittle a fine of $500K to a coach; that’s some heavy bread. The fine of $250K for the Pats as an organization is so meaningless that it doesn’t merit a comment. Losing draft choices might have an impact on the team in some future year - - or not.

What the NFL has done in this action is pave the way for some kind of future violation of this rule – probably using some different means of access to/retention of an opponent’s signals – to gain similar advantages. Why? Because the object of NFL teams is to win a sufficient number of games to make the playoffs and “wins” are the currency of the league. If signal stealing produces wins it will happen. If signal stealing results in loses via forfeiture, then it is far less likely to happen. It may be a while until the Pats or some other team gets caught doing this but it will be ongoing.

There was a minor buzz earlier this week when JaMarcus Russell finally signed with the Raiders. He will not take a meaningful snap this year for the Raiders because he’s missed far too much practice time. Hey, that worked for Carson Palmer a couple of years ago, right? Here’s something else Russell missed out on - - interest in his bank account. Do the calculation here using 5% as a rate of return on his signing bonus money. If he had signed on June 1, not only would he have been to all the mini-camp days and all the training camp practices and etc., he would also have earned somewhere in the neighborhood of $500K in interest over the 3.5 months since he could deposit the money. And that’s interest he’ll never recover because banks don’t allow deposits in hindsight…

Down a level in college football, there was a Year when Notre Dame played Michigan State and the result was a 10-10 tie. Lots of fans were disappointed because these were the #1 and #2 teams in the country that year and there was no possibility they could meet in one of the bowl games due to contract commitments between the Rose Bowl and the Big Ten. This year Notre Dame plays Michigan in a game where neither team is nearly good enough to be in the top twenty five and where neither team looks good enough to score 10 points. So, maybe the game can end 3-3 because after five scoreless overtimes both teams just decide it’s pointless to continue?

Related to this Michigan/Notre State game, Ohio State fans might want to curb their enthusiasm regarding Michigan’s misfortunes this year. I’ll bet there will be loads of Appalachian State gear worn to the Ohio State/Michigan game; I’ll bet that the final score of that game will be chanted loudly and frequently from the Ohio State side. HOW-EVAH [/Stephen A. Smith] what would a Michigan upset of Ohio State do? After all, that would mean that the Buckeyes lost to the team that lost to Appalachian State… Rather than gloat, Ohio State fans ought to be heading to their preferred houses of worship to pray that doesn’t happen to them.

I’ve said many times that pre-season polls are meaningless and should be ignored. But they aren’t. I’ve said that late season polls are hugely inaccurate and that they should not be used to determine which team is the best team in college football for any given season. But they are. So maybe we need a suggestion as to how we might make these polls more accurate and I have one idea:

Rescind permanently and irrevocably the voting privileges in any poll sponsored by any organization of anyone who voted for Michigan as one of the top five teams in the country going into this season.

And maybe the know-it-alls who voted for Florida State to be in the top twenty-five should have voting privileges rescinded too. It’s too soon to know that one but in five or six more weeks, we may be able to thin the herd a bit more…

The USA Today poll uses coaches to make the rankings on the theory that coaches know good teams from bad teams when they see them. The flaw in the logic is that coaches don’t see most of the teams they are going to vote for because they don’t have time; but hey, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. This week, the coaches have Auburn out of the top twenty-five (at #26) based on their loss to South Florida. That’s fine. However, they have South Florida ranked below Auburn at #27. Excuse me; South Florida just beat Auburn at Auburn.

If you are a fan of offensive football, let me point you to a game this weekend – not involving Hawaii. Last week, Baylor beat Rice and in the process of doing that, Baylor passed for over 400 yards and 6 TDs. That tells me that the pass defense for Rice is overmatched this year. This weekend, Rice gets to play Texas Tech with their pass-happy offense that is significantly superior to anything Baylor puts on the field. I’d look for at least 500 yards passing from Texas Tech in this game and maybe even more than 6 TDs. The only way Rice “stops” them is if a monsoon shows up.

The officials at Rutgers have apologized to Navy for the profane taunting of the Navy players and fans at their recent football game. These officials have pledged it shall not happen again. Good luck with that. Here’s an interesting irony. Rutgers students and fans wound themselves into an elevated state of righteous indignation when Don Imus called their women’s basketball team a derogative name. Imus was wrong to do that; his remarks were tasteless at best; but they were not profane or taunting. A former colleague used to say that I had lots of class; but sadly, it was all low class. I’m thinking that line might be applicable here…

Speaking of Rutgers makes me think about the Big East as a conference. So far in its out of conference games, the big East Teams are 14-2 by my counting – and both of those losses were turned in by Syracuse. Two of the victories came over Oregon State and Auburn; those wins point to a resurgent Big East conference on the playing field. However, most of the rest of the victories have come at the expense of teams that can’t really b e called “second level teams” because too many of them aren’t nearly that good. In alphabetical order, here are some of the top-shelf programs that have fattened that 14-2 record:

Buffalo
Duke
Elon
Grambling State
Maine
Middle Tennessee State
Murray State
Southeast Missouri State

Finally, here’s an observation from Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle:

“If the A’s build the ballpark they want to build in Fremont and build a village around it, the village rules will specifically exclude some businesses, including: Goodwill stores, card clubs, veterinary hospitals, funeral homes, porn shops, beauty schools and massage and tattoo parlors. So apparently the A’s aren’t planning to share the stadium with the Raiders.”

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