The Sports Curmudgeon®

These rants will be on hiatus for the next three weeks or so. My long-suffering wife and I are leaving for a trip to China and we don’t get back until 5 June. Given the LONG flight home and the 12 hour time change, I doubt I’ll be writing for several days after that.

Our trip originally was supposed to take us to Lhasa in Tibet for 4 days. The political unrest in that part of the world over the past month or so caused a change in plans. We are still scheudled to go to Sichuan Province very near where the earthquake just happened. My guess is that there will be another change in plans that we will deal with on the fly once we are in China.

Please check back here sometime after 5 June for more sports essays and commentary.

Stay well, everyone.

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Well, the Feds upped the ante in the Barry Bonds case. The indictment has been amended to include 14 counts of perjury and not just 4. To be sure, Bonds may be innocent in all 14 cases - - and innocent of the single charge of obstruction of justice too - - but his jeopardy did increase. So, now put yourself in the role of the guys hired by the MLBPA to investigate the possibility of collusion to keep Barry Bonds out of baseball and make the case that owners are not making him contract offers as a punitive measure and not because they wonder if he’ll actually be available to play baseball during his trial.

Someone said that this augmented indictment was a blessing to Roger Clemens because it took Clemens out of the headlines as baseball’s “bad boy”. Maybe temporarily that is the case, but the increased indictment for Bonds is simply more of the same kind of bad news that has surrounded Bonds for years now. In Clemens case, new bad stuff seems to keep coming out about him. At the moment, Clemens remains solidly in control of the “baseball’s bad boy” image…

I read a report that the Manchester United soccer team lost just over $113M for last fiscal year. This is a franchise that was valued at $1.8B and Malcom Glazer forked over a mountain of cash to take a controlling interest in the team. So how does that square with a loss of $113M for a single year?

Even though Manchester United generated revenue of almost $410M, it lost money because Glazer had to borrow a lot of money to make the purchase. And according to the financial revelation of the team, he borrowed that money at 14.25%. All I can say to that is, WOW! That’s like having several hundreds of millions of dollars in credit card debt. You would think that someone with the wherewithal even to open a discussion about borrowing that amount of money might have sufficient leverage in the financial world to get an interest rate near the prime rate. Obviously, that is not the case here…

Speaking of soccer, the coach of the LA Galaxy is not happy at all with his MLS team and its losing record so far this year. According to a report in the LA Times, the coach lashed out and said that his team lacked leadership on the field and that should be a bit strange. The Galaxy have Landon Donovan on the team; Donovan is the captain of the US national team meaning he has a leadership role. The Galaxy also have Carlos Ruiz on the team; Ruiz is the captain of the Guatemalan national team meaning he has a leadership role. And of course, the Galaxy have David Beckham on the team; Beckham is the former captain of the English national team meaning he had a leadership role there. Therefore, it is strange that the coach would call out his team for lack of leadership…

Jerry Greene reported in the Orlando Sentinel that ESPN had a Sports Poll where 1784 people described themselves as “avid fans” of the WNBA. ESPN then asked those 1784 self-identified “avid fans” how many games they attended in the last 12 months. According to ESPN, almost 91% of these “avid fans” attended zero games in the last year. But, it gets better. They asked these same “avid fans” if they had watched a WNBA game on TV in the last year and only 54.7 percent said they had. Imagine the responses if ESPN identified a couple thousand “tepid fans” for the WNBA…

A former colleague of mine used to be a baseball umpire at the collegiate level. He always used to say that the problem with college baseball at the lower echelons of the sport was that most teams didn’t have any pitchers who could reliably get anyone out so the games took forever to play. I suspect that he is glad that he did not have the game recently between Blackburn College and Illinois Wesleyan. In a nine-inning game, these two teams combined to use 19 pitchers; Blackburn used nine relievers in place of its starting pitcher and Illinois Wesleyan used eight relief pitchers. I could not find any mention of the time of the game but it had to be a long day’s work for the umpires.

At the other end of the pitching spectrum from that college game, Greg Maddux won his 350th major league game last week. His catcher that day was Luke Carlin and it was Carlin’s first major league game. So, kid, what do you do for an encore?

With the Preakness approaching and the certainty of PETA protests, let me say that the single most effective way for PETA to kill horseracing as a sport would be for them to work toward the repeal of the laws that allow slot machines at racetracks. The minor tracks cannot survive without the revenue from the slots and would have to cease operations. Without the minor tracks, there would not be enough of a breeding industry to sustain the sport. However, it is not easy to gain the votes of legislators by throwing fake blood on their wardrobes so continue to look for PETA to concentrate on getting “face time” in the news any time something tragic happens to a racehorse.

I read a report that said that Marvin Harrison told the Indy Colts that he had nothing to do with the shooting that happened in Philly - - the one that involved the gun he owns. Maybe he did; maybe he didn’t; there is more to learn here. However, there is no news at all in the report that he told the Colts he had nothing to do with the shooting. For him to say anything else would be tantamount to a confession and that cannot be a good legal strategy for him to pursue at this moment. So, maybe everyone needs to back off and let some more information about the incident come from the police investigators?

According to a story in the Arizona Republic, Glendale Arizona spent $3.4M to host last year’s Super Bowl game. In the same story, a study estimated that folks from other parts of the country came to Glendale and put $1.2M into the city coffers. This does not count the revenue generated by the NFL’s expenditures on its behalf so the deficit is not as large as it might seem at first. However, one of the local politicos says that you have to look at this in a broader sense than simply the “revenue generated” versus the “money put out”. One study showed that Glendale Arizona appeared in more than 5000 broadcast stories and industry experts valued that “exposure” and “advertising” at $27M. Therefore, the city showed a profit …

Sounds good, but try to spend some of that $27M of advertising benefit that you would never have spent on your own to fix those potholes or upgrade your libraries. Good luck with that, Glendale.

Finally, Bill Maher had this line about the ongoing Democratic presidential campaigns:

“70% of Americans in a new poll say they share Barack Obama’s values, in particular a complete disinterest in bowling.”

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

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I have no idea at all as to whether or not OJ Mayo is guilty of taking under the table payments from a guy who presumed to represent him while Mayo was in high school or while he was pretending to be a scholar-athlete at USC. Even if he were proven guilty here, I have no idea if any of the coaches or administrators at USC were knowledgeable of these arrangements or parties to any of them. The interesting thing about this particular set of revelations is that there seems to be a paper trail with regard to some of the money that allegedly changed hands. “Follow the money” is a tried and true way to get to the heart of scandalous behaviors; “paper trails” often make that journey simpler and less ambiguous. In this case, we shall see…

Having said that, am I surprised even a little bit by the possibility that OJ Mayo may have been involved in some kind of “payment scenario” that would be orthogonal to the rules of the NCAA? Not even slightly surprised.

The NY Knicks seem to have snagged their preferred coach in the time-honored tradition of NY sports. They offered to pay him more than any other team would be willing to pay him. Now before anyone gets himself or herself into a froth that this is some kind of denigration of NY sports in general, it is not. I would like, however, to point out that the Knicks roster is made up of a large number of players who are taking down salaries that are way above what any other team might be willing to play those players and that such a strategy seems not to be working out all that perfectly. So maybe there is some consistency here. If Mike D’Antoni has to try to coach a group of overpaid players who do not have the credentials to justify their salary, why should he not also be overpaid?

Why do I consider him overpaid? I am already on record that I think he is a good coach and that he presents to the fans an interesting/exciting style of play. Nevertheless, I think he is overpaid in this case because guaranteed contracts worth $24M normally go to coaches who have won a championship or two; he has not. Perhaps, a contract of that magnitude might go to a coach who has taken a team to the NBA Finals a couple of times only to lose to an opponent thought to be dynastic; he has not.

The Knicks will be more exciting to watch if they play D’Antoni’s preferred style of basketball. However, with the roster they have at the moment, I do not expect them to be hugely successful. In a racehorse basketball game, I do not see Jerome James or Eddie Curry flourishing in any way; Stephon Marbury will never be confused with Steve Nash. It should take the Knicks at least two years if not three to generate sufficient turnover in this roster to accommodate D’Antoni’s preferred style of play. D’Antoni’s contract runs for four years. It will be interesting to see if the NY fans and the NY media have the patience to see if the team can make this change over the life of that contract.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have won 7 of their last 10 games and are approaching a .500 record. If they were to finish the season below .500 this would be the 16th straight season that the Pirates have done that; it would tie the major league record for consecutive losing seasons now held by the Phillies. Considering baseball futility records, here is a Quick Quiz for today:

What is more difficult to do?

a. Go 16 straight seasons without a single winning record.

b. Go 100 straight seasons without winning a single World Series.

An adage says that when you go to a baseball game and there is always the possibility you will see something happen that you have never seen before. Well, the following has certainly happened before, but usually it happens in Little League games or in “Beer League” games. The Cincinnati Reds batted out of order last weekend. Granted, there had been an earlier double-switch in the game that may have caused some confusion, but manager Dusty Baker said that he had the correct line-up on the wall of the dugout. Shameful is the word that first comes to mind…

By the way, am I the only one old enough to remember a time when “DH” in baseball referred to a double-header and not a designated hitter?

Previously, I suggested that the value of sports franchises could not continue to spiral upwards indefinitely. At some point, the values here have to hit a plateau if not undergo some kind of “correction”. A political event in Florida might be a signal that such a plateau is closer than one might think. In the budget for the State of Florida for 2009, there is a provision that will withhold state sales tax monies that were previously pledged to bonds and loans for stadia/arenas built for professional sports franchises. That will not immediately drive such bonds into default, but it has to affect adversely the credit rating of those instruments and the credit rating of the organizations that issued the bonds. Moreover, that means future borrowing for such expenditures will likely cost the governmental entities more than it does now.

Will there be a ripple effect outside Florida? Perhaps not - - unless and until some other state follows suit and leads bond investors to believe that such borrowings are not worth the risk. Florida’s sales tax assistance to local entities that borrowed money to build stadia/arenas has been in place for about 20 years; now it is not there and that means it will be a bone of contention in future budget wranglings in the Florida Legislature. Obviously, some of the folks who are involved in the issuance of such bonds or holders of such bonds have cried foul. They think this is a violation of some kind of “contract” that the state has with the people who bought the bonds. Good luck with that kind of argument…

I have no idea where this is all going, but this could be a significant event in terms of owners’ abilities to get new playpens for their teams at taxpayer expense - - because the expense to those taxpayers could increase significantly if the Florida model spreads widely to other states. Stay tuned to this one…

Finally, Greg Cote had this cogent observation in the Miami Herald recently:

“Baseball has its owners meeting this week in Milwaukee. The first order of business is expected to find owners grappling with the obvious question: Why on Earth would we meet in MILWAUKEE!?”

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

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Last week I wrote that Matt Walsh’s 15 minutes of fame might be ending. Nonetheless, Senator Arlen Specter – representing the great state of Showboating – has issued a statement urging the NFL not to presume that all of this is over and done with. In addition, Specter continues to say that he may push for Senatorial hearings into all of this business. His “cover” for that kind of saber-rattling is that he is a long-time Eagles’ fan – having cut his political teeth as a crusading DA in Philly many many years ago – and that he believes there may have been a violation of the Intelligence Espionage Act by the Pats when they taped opponents’ signals. I do not doubt the former “excuse”; the Eagles lost a Super Bowl game to the Patriots; the latter “excuse” is a real stretch. But there just might be another motivation at work here.

Recall that Comcast is one of the big time cable TV companies that is locked into a stalemate with the NFL Network over access. I do not want to rehash that argument here but it should not surprise anyone to hear that the NFL Network seeks to maximize its revenue and distribution while Comcast seeks to minimize its expenses; therein lies the dispute. How does this relate to threatened Senate hearings on “Spygate”? Well, it turns out that Comcast is one of Arlen Specter’s largest campaign contributors and supporters over the years. Kabeesh?

NFL Network should not feel put upon by Comcast. The Big Ten Network (BTN) is sort of in the same boat. BTN wants to be on Comcast in the basic package but wants to charge Comcast more than basic package rights fees; Comcast has told BTN the same thing it has told NFLN. Maybe BTN will get some Senatorial support if they start to make the right contributions…

In all of this, the NFL and the Big Ten are trying to portray themselves as the helpless victims of the cable TV companies. If you look at the revenues of both football entities, it is hard to see how their existence is remotely threatened in this matter. Nevertheless, the spin-meisters will work overtime to try to convince you that is the case. Don’t believe it.

There may be a quarterback controversy developing that is worth keeping an eye on in San Francisco. Alex Smith and Shaun Hill were thought to be the ones who would “duke it out” in training camp to see who best mastered new offensive coordinator, Mike Martz’, system. However, the Niners also signed JT O’Sullivan who was with the Lions last year and O’Sullivan has been in minicamp and has impressed. I read some Bay Area reports that say he may have the lead in a three-way race to be the Niners starting QB. If he wins that job, it will not be anything near a proud moment for Alex Smith who was the overall #1 pick in the draft not so very long ago.

Compare Smith’s “pedigree” to JT O’Sullivan who has been in the NFL since 2002. Next year will be O’Sullivan’s seventh season and the Niners are his seventh team; O’Sullivan has never started a game in the NFL, and, in fact, has only appeared in five games in his career; he appeared in four games with the Lions last year and earned a QB rating of 48.4. And he may be “in the lead” to become the starting QB in San Francisco!

I also read a puff piece about Josh McCown working hard in Miami to be the starting QB there. He says that he will spare no effort to win that job and is confident he will be under center once the season starts. Good for him; self-confidence is an important attribute for a QB. Nevertheless, I think his agent needs to sit down with him and talk to him about the kinds of teams he signs on with. Let’s review the bidding here:

2002/05: Arizona Cardinals. Team record over 4 years 20-44. That averages out to 5 wins a year.

2006: Detroit Lions. Team record that season 3-13

2007: Oakland Raiders. Team record that season 4-12

2008: Miami Dolphins. Team record in 2008 is still TBD, but the record for 2007 was 1-15.

Josh McCown has not stared and lost all of those games himself to be sure. However, the teams he has found employment with over his career have a cumulative record of 27- 69 going into the 2008 season. Just be sure we are on the same page, that is not good.

I was grazing through the channels this weekend and stumbled across the golf tournament of the week. As I watched a ball fly through the air and disappear into a body of water, I heard the whispering announcer tell me, “his ball found the water”. Excuse me; but no, it did not. The ball went where the goof hit it; the ball found nothing; the player caused the ball to wind up in the drink. I changed channels quickly…

When Shaq was doing his training as a police officer and going out on patrols with the local gendarmes, it was interesting to ponder a confrontation between Shaq and a normal sized ne’er-do-well. That was a vision of “the long arm of the law”. Well, Shaq may have to take second place in that imagery now. There is a pro ‘rassler whose nom de guerre is The Great Khali. He is 7’3” tall and weighs 420 lbs; he was and remains a member of the police force in India. He had been granted a leave of absence by the police there when he came to the US to ‘rassle for the WWE.

I did a Google image search for The Great Khali. He is definitely a large human being…

Finally, Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle summarized in three short sentences all you need to know about the IOC and the way they plan to prevent athletes’ protests in the China games this summer:

“The International Olympic Committee has issued a decree prohibiting athletes competing at the Games in China from engaging in any kind of political or religious protest or demonstration. As a parent I know that the one sure way to stop kids from doing what you don’t want them to do is by telling them they can’t do it. So, mission accomplished!”

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

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Unless and until Matt Walsh tells Roger Goodell that there are other people out there who also have illicit videotapes made by the New England Patriots of opponents’ signals, Walsh’s fifteen minutes of fame is up. We already knew that the Pats taped opponents’ signals in the past. Given that Walsh’s attorney has certified to the league that these are the only such tapes he has in his possession, there is nothing else that is interesting about Matt Walsh with regard to these matters. Because the bell is about to toll on his minor celebrity status, allow me to ask a couple of rhetorical questions that will probably only be answered in some book that he might write one of these days - - and in that case may only be answered in a self-serving and nuanced way:

1. When he left the employ of the New England Patriots, why did he take a half-dozen or so of these game tapes with him? Since he preserved them for about six years, it surely wasn’t to have the medium available to him so he could tape over that stuff with late night movies.

2. If taking these tapes is the only thing he did that might – I said might – be considered “actionable” in leaving the Patriots, why did he and his lawyer spend so much time and energy obtaining assurances/immunity from the NFL that he would not be culpable for anything?

Meanwhile, I have a less than rhetorical question for Roger Goodell that I wish someone would put to him when he’s in front of a microphone and camera next:

At the beginning of the 2007 season, you sent a letter/directive to each team spelling out the impropriety of taping opponents’ signals. One might easily read it as a “cease and desist order”. Then in Game 1, the Jets caught the Pats making such a tape. Unless you had other complaints regarding this subject from teams about the Pats and/or other teams, can you explain why you took the time and effort to write that letter on that specific topic at that specific time?

Follow up question: If you say it was “routine league business”, can you tell us three other random topics you have warned all the teams about in a similar time frame?

Sticking with the NFL for a moment, the Bears have released Adam Archuletta. In his final year with the Rams and in his short stint with the Redskins, it had to be clear to any offensive coordinator that Archuletta could not cover a fire hydrant. Evidently, the Bears figured that out too because he began the year as a starter but lost that starting spot midway through the 2007 season. The Redskins signed Archuletta to a contract that was the highest in the league for a safety at the time; then they traded him to the Bears for a 7th round draft pick; now he is an unrestricted free agent. If you look up “precipitous decline” in the dictionary Archuletta’s career path and the stock market crash of 1929 will be used as exemplars.

I want to give you the stat lines for the 2007/08 season for two “hypothetical players” in the NBA and then pose a question.

Player A: 28.3 points per game, 6.3 rebounds per game, 5.4 assists per game, 45.9% field goal average, 0.5 blocked shots per game, 1.8 steals per game.

Player B: 30.0 points per game, 7.9 rebounds per game, 7.2 assists per game, 48.4% field goal average, 1.1 blocks per game, 1.8 steals per game.

Since “Player B” is ahead in every statistical category here except steals per game where the two players are tied, one might conclude that “Player B” had a better year than “Player A” did. Nevertheless, the folks covering the NBA did not think so. “Player A” is Kobe Bryant – the league’s MVP. “Player B” is LeBron James.

When the BCS Commissioners met about two weeks ago and decided not to change the BCS system, that was hardly surprising. They have a cash cow on their hands and even though a playoff system might bring in even more cash, it would present stress to the bowl system and there was no need for them to choose to incur such stress. They met; they listened to a proposal for a “plus-1” system; they voted; nothing changed. Other than a bit of frustration, there was no story there; everything went as expected.

However, after the meeting, a story emerged due to the flapping gums of E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University. In terms of high-sounding linguistic blather, this guy appears to be in training to replace Dr. Myles Brand when Dr. Brand finishes his stated mission of reining in all those rogue athletic programs out there. Said Gee about the “plus-1” playoff proposal:

“We will not cross that line and get onto the slippery slope: the professionalization of college football and a furthering of the arms race. We simply have to say no. If we don’t say no to this, the horse has left the barn totally. I will vote against it under any circumstance.”

That horse may have left the barn, but it sure left a lot of horse[bleep] behind. Even a university president whose contact with reality is normally years behind him or her has to recognize that college football is professionalized already. They added an extra game just a few years ago; they play conference championship games for the sole purpose of bring in additional revenue; they now involve 68 of the 121 Division 1-A schools in bowl games to bring in revenue. That, folks, is professionalization. Moreover, if E. Gordon Gee doesn’t get that, then he is worse than a buffoon; he is a moronic buffoon.

Some have said that since the BCS runs college football – and not the NCAA directly – there is no way for the NCAA to implement a playoff because the BCS teams may refuse to participate. That might bring about an interesting power struggle. Suppose the NCAA said they would stage some kind of football tournament after the bowl games and/or in conjunction with the bowl games AND any team that refused to be in the football tournament would not be allowed in the NCAA basketball tournament either. More broadly, make it any conference that would not participate in the football tournament…

There are some schools – like Ohio State – that make a ton of money on the football program. Many schools do not make a ton of money there. Far more schools show a profit on college basketball than on football and most of the major football schools also have basketball programs that operate in the black. It might be an interesting showdown. However, it will never happen because all Dr. Myles Brand and E. Gordon Gee like to do is talk and posture. They are both a waste of space.

Finally, Dwight Perry had this observation in the Seattle Times regarding the football playoff debate:

“Just wondering

“How can an 11-team conference that calls itself the Big Ten possibly be opposed to a ‘plus one’ football playoff?”

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

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The Orlando Magic crushed the Detroit Pistons last night throwing kerosene on the embers of yet another NBA controversy regarding an error by a timekeeper. Game 2 of this series witnessed the third demonstrable scoring table error of this season. This one happened in the playoffs. I have said here before that the timekeepers in basketball games can affect the outcome of games if they are so inclined. The NBA had better look into ways to “professionalize” that position or they risk adding more anecdotal “evidence” to the stories of conspiracy theorists who are convinced that all NBA games are rigged in the first place. Listen to any of those true believers and the only games that are not fixed by the folks in the NBA executive suites to garner ratings and exposure for top stars are the games rigged by the mob who have referees in their pocket.

Memo to David Stern: Get on this. Make this problem go away.

Another NBA story that hangs out there could be made into a movie - - Whither Mike D’Antoni? If he is really zipping back and forth among Chicago, Dallas, Toronto and NYC as rumored, this guy will have so many frequent flyer miles by the end of next week, he could qualify to be an astronaut. I have read that the “knock” on D’Antoni is that he does not press his players to exert themselves on defense – hence his teams do not play all that well at the defensive end of the floor.

If that is the case, then Mike D’Antoni should realize that he is a perfect fit for the NY Knicks. That team is made up virtually exclusively of players who already know how not to exert themselves on defense. So all D’Antoni would have to do in NY would be to teach them his offense.

In MLB, there is a tempest in a teapot going on regarding the Chicago White Sox and their locker room “ritual” to try to break out of team-wide batting slump. The “ritual” involved a couple of inflatable female dolls surrounded by strategically placed bats and signs reading, “You’ve got to push” and “Let’s go White Sox”. For the record, that behavior is puerile to the nth degree and any thought that it might actually cure a team-wide batting slump would require some belief system that admits voodoo as a part of its foundation. This is the kind of silliness one might expect during a fraternity initiation week on a campus somewhere.

Having said that, there isn’t all that much reason to get one’s knickers in a knot about this. I do not care where those bats were strategically placed, the doll was not violated or objectified or demeaned in any way; it’s a doll! It is perfectly appropriate to look upon this display with a measure of disgust on the basis that it is stupid, silly, and immature, but to put oneself into a state of high dudgeon over this because it symbolizes the oppression of women everywhere is pretty silly in and of itself.

This behavior happened in a baseball clubhouse. If they had done it at high noon in the middle of Millennium Park in Chicago in full view of hundreds of passers by, that would make the behavior more than puerile; it would be offensive. Other people going about their business might have happened upon it. But this happened in the White Sox’ clubhouse. I do not want to make that out to be a sanctum sanctorum; it is not. At the same time, it is where baseball players – many of whom are adults only chronologically – engage in their team antics.

Pretend for a moment that one of my joys in life is to play air guitar in the nude in my garage. Trust me; it is not. Now, suppose that I am in medias res on some piece when you walk up to my garage and fling up the door with the intent of returning something to me. You arrive in the midst of my “performance”. Sorry, but you do not have a whole lot of “right” to take offense. My behavior is harmless – albeit abjectly stupid – and I am doing it in a place where I have every expectation that no one will need to be subjected to my harmless stupidity.

Rather than seeing the White Sox locker room incident as another bit of evidence of female oppression, I see it as meaningless feckless stupidity.

Yesterday, Dwight Perry had this query in his Sideline Chatter column in the Seattle Times:

Today’s sports quiz

The ultimate example of “total disregard for the bottom line” would be:

a) The Giants giving a pitcher with four straight years of double-digit losses a $126 million contract.

b) The Sonics abandoning the nation’s 14th-largest media market so they can move to the 45th-largest.

c) John Daly bending over to pick up a golf ball.

In that spirit, let me offer a Quick Quiz for today:

What was Roger Clemens’ biggest mistake?

a) Taking performance enhancing drugs

b) Taking advice from Rusty Hardin

c) Marital infidelity

d) Suing his personal trainer who was aware of so many of Clemens’ iniquities

Finally, there has been a whole lot of frothing around the issue of Brazilian soccer icon, Ronaldo, becoming involved with three prostitutes who turned out to be transvestites. All I can say is that this could be a lot worse. At least none of the transvestites was 15 years old.

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

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Long-term readers of these rants know that I have a longstanding fondness for betting on horse races. They also know that I am anything but enamored by the goofs that run horseracing and the politicians who legislate about it. Now, in the aftermath of Eight Belles horrible demise at the end of the Kentucky Derby, lots has been written – and said – about that incident and what it may or may not mean. I’ve read a lot of it and I think there are three columns out there that are excellent and stand out from most of the rest. As I would have expected, Andy Beyer had a thoughtful analysis in the Washington Post.

Also in the Washington Post, Sally Jenkins had some useful suggestions and keen observations about the matter.

And on the other side of the country, Jerry Brewer of the Seattle Times had this to say about the tragic events of last weekend and how the people who run racing need to take heed.

I suggest that you read these columns for yourself as you try to make up your mind about what might be done to minimize the occurrence of such fatal breakdowns in future races. And I suggest at the same time that you ignore the outrageous call by PETA for the suspension of the jockey who rode Eight Belles. I’ve watched that race on tape at least a half-dozen times; that jockey did no more whipping than I’ve seen in a thousand other races where the jockey on the horse in second place was trying to catch the leader AND maintain his second place position against other horses. If that ride merits a suspension for Gabriel Saez, then every jockey in every race will need to be suspended and there will be no more horseracing. But of course, that’s what PETA wants and that’s what they know they cannot achieve with a direct appeal/approach.

With regard to the coaching carousel in the NBA, the word is that Rick Carlisle has the inside track for the head-coaching job in Dallas. Obviously, I have no inside information to drop on you with regard to that coaching sweepstakes, but I do have some questions in my mind as to why Rick Carlisle should be a shoo-in there. Consider:

In Indiana, Carlisle won 61 games one season and took the Pacers to the NBA Finals.

In Detroit, Carlisle had back-to-back 50+ game winning seasons and went to the NBA Finals.

AND, Rick Carlisle was fired from both jobs.

Sorry, but something here just doesn’t seem to compute…

Sticking with the NBA for a moment, the league announced last week that 69 US underclassmen and 22 players from overseas had filed to be “early entry candidates for the 2008 NBA Draft”. That’s 91 players who want to get into the league early because they think it is time for them to “take their game to the next level”. Folks, here is some math that will bring the cool light of reality onto some of those dreams.

There are 30 NBA teams and each of them gets 2 draft choices. That means there will be 60 players selected in the 2008 NBA Draft. If there are 91 players who think they are good enough to get into the NBA with an early entry, then at the very least, two-thirds of them are deluding themselves about being drafted. That is not some curmudgeonly sentiment; that is the way the math works out; that is reality.

There are rumors floating out there that the NFL wants to stage an awards show on the Friday night before the Super Bowl where they will hand out league awards such as the MVP and the RoY and that kind of thing. You can think of this as the Oscars with steroids and without cleavage. I doubt that I would be compelled to tune into this program but if it really does come to pass, here is an idea – provided at no cost – for the NFL to create a win/win situation:

Such a new program will create a new revenue stream – and probably not an inconsequential one.

The NFL should take the net proceeds from this show and put it into a trust fund to provide health care for older NFL players who are in need.

Everyone wins. The NFL gets a new showcase for itself and it provides new monies to the health care of older players to negate some of the very bad publicity it has been getting on that issue.

Roger Goodell need not thank me - - although I’d love to join him in an owners’ box at a game some day…

I’ve read that the Buffalo Bills will get $78M from sources in Canada to play eight Bills’ home games in Toronto over the next five years. That’s almost $10M per game and obviously the Bills will also get a share of the live gate. That is a significant amount of money for a “small market franchise”. Here is what I wonder:

How many Buffalonians will the Bills alienate with this move?

How badly will those Buffalonians be alienated and will they disassociate themselves from the Bills?

Perhaps this is a sign of the apocalypse. I saw a headline last week for an article about a mock fantasy draft for next football season. That is just wrong.

Finally, with all the spelling lessons and all the practice that Jets’ fans get during Jets games, how come one of them doesn’t win the National Spelling Bee every year?

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

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Here is some more information on the new college football bowl games that have received blessing by the NCAA. The Congressional Bowl will be played in Washington DC in December and Navy will be one of the teams - - no matter how mediocre Navy may be in any given year so long as it is bowl eligible. That is not a given. Navy has been good for the last several years but before that you could pencil in Navy for less than four wins every season and be “on the money”.

When Navy plays in the game, there will be some kind of draw despite the Middies being on Holiday Break because there are a large number of “Navy people” in the DC area. But if Navy isn’t eligible and the game has to go bottom fishing for a team, this game will be played to a stadium full of no one. The opponent will be an ACC team that does not qualify for any other ACC contractual bowl game. Translation: This team is not on life support at the moment but is being closely monitored in its hospital setting.

The St. Petersburg Bowl – guess where it will be played – is an indoor bowl game in Florida in the winter. If that makes sense to you, then the game should be on your “must watch list”. The game will feature a team that had no chance to win the Big East playing a team that was inconsequential at best in C-USA. If my count is correct, this will be the sixth C-USA team committed to a bowl game; so the good folks in Tampa St. Pete can look forward to a raucous crowd arriving from a C-USA school that has already probably lost a minimum of 5 games in the season. You’ll forgive me if I yawn here…

Meanwhile, the good folks in Salt Lake City who also petitioned the NCAA for a bowl game were denied this grand opportunity. The NCAA pooh-bahs thought that adding a 35th bowl game would require 70 bowl eligible teams and that might be cutting it too closely since only 71 teams were bowl eligible last season. Maybe the Salt Lake City folks should take the lead in a “plus-one format”. Maybe they should petition to have a bowl game in January pitting the winner of the Congressional Bowl against the winner of the St. Petersburg Bowl. Why not? It can’t be any less interesting than some of the match-ups out there already.

Speaking of college football, I see that Lou Holtz was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. Excuse me, but didn’t he leave more than one school just in time to dodge NCAA sanctions? Translation: the new coach was left holding the bag. I think I can conclude from this selection that the College Football Hall of Fame is one where “on the field” exploits are the only thing that counts and “character issues” are less than irrelevant. Pete Rose should have played college football…

Kevin Kennedy is an OK baseball analyst for FOX Sports; there are better and there are worse. However, in a recent effervescence about the start of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Kennedy noted that they were 20-8 in April and said:

“You multiply that by a six-month season, you do that every month, you got 100 wins.”

That has to make me wonder what Kevin Kennedy scored on his SAT math test…

José Canseco has lost/abandoned his home to foreclosure. His attorney told the SF Chronicle, “He [Canseco] made a mathematical decision and just let it go.” There was already an IRS lien on the house and there was a judgment against Canseco – and his brother – dealing with a fracas at a Miami nightspot in 2001. The lien and the judgment added up to just under $1.5M and so the house became a liability and not an asset. But it does make one wonder:

Aren’t the royalties on his two books enough to pay down the liens and make the house worth something?

Weren’t people paying money just to spend the day with Canseco in his home - - when he was under house arrest - - just to be able to have “the Canseco experience”? I guess there weren’t a lot of those lambs to be fleeced out there…

Isn’t Canseco in the midst of a huge movie deal – the one he wanted Maglio Ordonez to back financially – which will bring in money hand over fist?

Barry Zito has taken a huge measure of grief for his huge guaranteed contract and his horrendous pitching performance this year. Overshadowed by this is the situation involving the Braves’ Mike Hampton. He too got a huge contract – not as big as Zito’s, but still huge – from the Braves and he has been out of action for almost three years now. In his latest minor league rehab assignment, Hampton had to leave a minor-league game with pain in his pectoral muscle. His last appearance in a major league game was in August 2005.

Here’s another Olympics note that seems to be a bit off key. Canwest Publishing owns a bunch of newspapers in Western Canada; the 2010 Winter Games are in Vancouver, which is in Western Canada; Canwest has “signed on” with the Vancouver Olympics Organizing Committee to be the “Official Regional Newspaper for the 2010 Games”. In exchange for advertising/promotional space in Canwest’s many papers, the Vancouver Organizing folks will give Canwest “exclusive rights in the regional newspaper publisher/product service category”.

If this does not present a self-evident case of an “appearance of conflict of interest” for Canwest, then I guess I just don’t understand what an appearance of conflict of interest might be. Forget whether or not the sportswriters of Canwest will get preferential access to stories and officials; they will. Suppose there is an emerging story that might involve “corruption” or “wrongdoing” involving some of the Vancouver Organizing folks; might the Canwest coverage of that kind of story be suspect? It would be to me…

Finally, Scott Ostler in the SF Chronicle offered this insight into the entirety of the college football bowl picture:

“Bowl Championship Series officials rejected a proposal to decide the national champion with a four-team playoff. However, the BCS big-wigs did agree to a significant change in their system. From now on, after all the usual procedures are followed, the top two teams will be selected by superdelegates.”

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

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When NBC acquired the television rights to the Kentucky Derby, one of the positive parts of its bid was that it wanted to do a one-hour show leading up to the race itself. That show caught on and developed good ratings and was expanded to two hours either last year or the year before that. This year, it was a program that took the better part of three hours. Folks, there isn’t that much to say about a single horse race to fill three hours on TV; I don’t care how many “up close and personal” features they make or how many stories of “tragedies overcome” they put together, three hours is too much.

And then comes what they like to call “the most exciting two minutes in sports.” Well, before anyone gets all lathered up about the sterling performance exhibited by Big Brown on Saturday, here’s something to consider. Using fairly standard handicapping techniques, Big Brown would have finished 13 lengths behind Secretariat had he been in Secretariat’s Derby. So, pardon me if I don’t fall all over myself in ecstasy over a race won by the least worst of a sorry crop of three-year olds.

One other thing about the race that makes me a bit edgy is that Big Brown’s trainer, Rick Dutrow, has more than a checkered past. He has been fined or suspended by the racing authorities in six different states and every year for about the past five years some of his horses have had “issues” involving illegal substances. Does winning the Derby vindicate him or give him stature? Or does his prior behavior taint “the most exciting two minutes in sports”? You make the call…

And by the way, “the most exciting two minutes in sports” compared to what? Compared to:

Some diva stretching out her less than artistic rendition of the National Anthem?

The time it takes an NFL referee to review a replay tape?

The two minutes it takes some batters to scratch, spit, adjust the batting glove, scratch again, scrape dirt in the batters’ box, spit again, scratch yet another time …?

The two minutes it takes a PGA golfer to line up a putt?

I agree. Saturday’s Derby race was more exciting than those sports happenings…

Another thing that was less exciting than it could have been over the weekend was the Celtics/Hawks Game 7 of their playoff series. Atlanta scored 26 points in the first half of that game; the outcome was not really in doubt at any point in the second half. The defensive stats for the Celtics demonstrate the reason for the rout. The Celtics blocked ten shots had eleven steals and forced sixteen turnovers in the game. The Hawks blocked only five shots, had only two steals and forced only eight turnovers. That’s dominating the stat sheet; that’s not an intriguing game to watch; the outcome was not in doubt for very long.

Lots of people in sports media decry the use of “new stadium blackmail” used by rich and powerful team owners to get taxpayer money to feather their already well-feathered nests. But I don’t see or hear too many folks screeching about the same kind of arm-twisting done by the US Olympic Committee. USOC claimed that their office space was inadequate for its staff and all the important work that staff does. They threatened to move their HQS out of Colorado Springs. In case you didn’t know, the USOC offices were on the site of the US Olympic Training facility in Colorado Springs which came about without members of the USOC sitting on street corners with tin cups in hand…

Somehow, Chicago became the rumored relocation site - - and remember that Chicago wants the USOC’s blessing to bid for the 2016 Olympics. That was enough of a credible threat that the mahoofs running Colorado Springs capitulated and came up with a “public/private funding package” worth more than $50M including 90,000 square feet of top-shelf office space in downtown Colorado Springs. The city is on the hook for a little more than $25M but the USOC will stay in town for the next 25 years.

Please remember that the “relocation three-card-monte game” isn’t always played by team owners. The USOC takes its regular turn slopping up goodies from the public trough.

Meanwhile, the reason that Houston has the MLS soccer team that it does is because the team used to be in San José and could not get a new stadium built for them there. So it relocated. However, the Houston area is not exactly falling all over itself to get a new stadium done for the Dynamo either. One proposal called for the Dynamo to pay for the stadium to be built on land owned by the city; and in the end, the city would own the stadium. Needless to say, the Dynamo didn’t buy that one.

Now the Dynamo has played the “relocation card” and maybe they have found out that it is not a trump card. Houston’s mayor isn’t budging and the Dynamo has already been moved once. Stay tuned in to this one…

The CBS College Sports Network and the Association of Independent Competitive Eaters staged the first College National Eating Championship a couple of weeks ago in San Diego. Contestants ate plates of “college food” such as cheeseburgers and fries. How long until the NCAA steps in to try to regulate this latest sporting competition?

The National Association of Sports Commissions named the Cleveland Sports Commission the “2007 Sports Commission of the Year”. I’m having a tough time figuring out what a city or state sports commission does that is important enough to justify an award. Moreover, I have exactly no idea why the world is a better place because of the existence of the National Association of Sports Commissions.

Ryan Perrilloux was kicked off the LSU football team permanently and looks for a place to transfer where he can play football. Going to a Division I-AA school would allow him to play without sitting out a year. Perrilloux reportedly failed a drug test and that was the final straw. He had previously been associated with a counterfeiting investigation, using phony ID to get into a gaming casino and a contretemps at a Baton Rouge nightspot. Perrilloux was a top recruit and had made an oral commitment to Texas and swerved at the last minute going to LSU. That is probably the best thing to happen to Texas in that recruiting year.

Interestingly, one of the players at LSU who might replace Perrilloux at QB for the Tigers is Andrew Hatch - - who is a transfer to LSU from Harvard. Yes, that Harvard…

Finally, here’s an item from Dwight Perry’s column in the Seattle Times:

“Transplanted San Antonians John and Rhonda Till of Greensboro, N.C., are such big fans of the Spurs that their 2-year-old son is named Parker Duncan Ginobili Till.

“Just be glad he wasn’t born back when Dampier, Olberding and Paultz were playing.”

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

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Often, I use a line from Scott Ostler’s column in the SF Chronicle to make a point or provide a chuckle. Here is a link to one of his recent columns that you ought to read in its entirety.

Enjoy.

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