Heap as many accolades as you want on LeBron James for his game last night; they are deserved. In the rush to adoration, however, do not overlook the game that Chris Bosh had last night with 11 rebounds and two important blocked shots in the overtime period. Game 7 ought to be fun…

With regard to the acquisition of Tim Tebow by the New England Patriots, I have to admit that I was stunned to see that as a crawl on the bottom of the screen on CNN International while in a hotel breakfast room in Oslo. Absent a situation whereby Tom Brady undergoes multiple amputation surgeries, there is no way Tebow is going to “compete for” the starting QB role there. Moreover, with Ryan Mallet and Mike Kafka already on the Pats’ roster, it is not clear to me that Tebow is a shoo-in to be the #2 guy behind Brady.

However, there are plenty of folks who believe that Tebow has a future in the NFL either as a fullback or as a tight end. If that is what drove the Pats’ decision, then perhaps this move makes sense because the Pats’ depth chart at those two positions might be a tad thin. Consider:

Fullback: The #1 guy at the moment, James Develin, has yet to carry the ball in the NFL and went to Brown. His backup, Ben Bartholomew, has yet to see the field in an NFL game. I am not saying that either or both of these guys are stiffs; there is no way to know if they can play or not because they have not done so. On the other hand, there might be an opening for Tebow at that position.

Tight End: Rob Gronkowski may have more surgeries in 2013 than he does receptions if things do not change course soon. A report yesterday says that Aaron Hernandez was questioned by police in a matter that involves a homicide. Behind those two very accomplished tight ends, the Pats have Michael Hoomanawanui and Daniel Fells; both of them have shown superior blocking prowess rather than pass-catching prowess. There might be an opening for Tebow at tight end too…

The announced retirement of E. Gordon Gee as the President of THE Ohio State University removes yet one more hypocritical gasbag from the college sports scene; sadly, there seems to be an unending supply of them. Dr. Gee ranks right up there with Dr. Myles Brand, Juan Antonio Samaranch, Jacques Rogge and Sepp Blatter in the ranks of annoying hominids to have infested the planet. I shall not regret his removal from the sporting scene…

A member of the women’s golf team at Portland University unintentionally shone a light into the continued nonsense of NCAA rules regarding student-athletes. Portland self-reported a potential violation of NCAA rules to the “head shed in Indianapolis” for the following situation:

This student-athlete washed her car on campus using university facilities – water from the spigot and a hose and perhaps even a bucket owned by the university. The compliance maven at Portland thought this might be a rules violation because every student at the school would not have access to this benefit; hence the report. The university also reported that as a remedy, they had charged the student-athlete $20 to cover the costs of the water used and some value associated with the use of the hose and bucket and whatever.

[Aside: I do not know the cost of water in the Portland Oregon area but here in Northern Virginia $20 will get me 1871 gallons of water including the cost of draining that water through the sewer system. That must have been one large vehicle she washed to use that much water.]

To its credit, the NCAA said that this was not a violation of its rules but it appreciated the notification. To its discredit, one possible reason the report was made in the first place may have been that the NCAA had to make a change to its rules because at one time it allowed schools to provide bagels to potential recruits for breakfast but did not allow them to provide cream cheese for those bagels. An organization that could make a silly “cream cheese rule” could just as easily have a “water use rule” somewhere in that compendium and so it is better to self-report than get caught on the wrong end an investigation.

That situation leads directly to a Quick Quiz. This one is simple; you merely have to make a binary choice:

Which US institution has the greater percentage of asshats among its members and its employees?

A. The Congress of the United States – or –

B. The NCAA

George Karl was named the Coach of the Year for 2013; he led the Denver Nuggets to the NBA playoffs for the ninth year in a row. George Karl was then fired by the Denver Nuggets. Clearly, I am missing something here…

Finally, Brad Rock had this comment in the Deseret News regarding the firing of another NBA coach – Vinny Del Negro – by the LA Clippers:

“[Del Negro] won a club-record 56 games and directed the Clippers’ first division championship.

“Sources say the ownership liked his style, but felt he had violated a time-honored Clippers tradition of finishing last and losing 50-plus games per year.”

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

When I left the country, the NBA playoffs had the Spurs waiting to see if they would face the Heat or the Pacers in the Finals. Now that I am back, the Spurs and the Heat are in the midst of their playoff series. Seriously, can the NBA stretch this out any longer?

When I left the country, the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs were in the semi-final round. Now that I am back, the Bruins and the Blackhawks are facing each other in the Stanley Cup Finals and it looks as if there is at least another week left to go in that tête-à-tête. Seriously, can the NHL stretch this out any longer? Assume for a moment that the Bruins/Blackhawks series ends in a week – 25 June. The NHL teams will be reporting to training camps in early September; that is less than 12 weeks of the year where the NHL is “dark”. I think that the NHL has reached the point where this adage applies to it:

Enough is enough and too much is plenty.

The opera regarding the venue for the Sacramento Kings for the near future appears to be over; there is new ownership for the Kings and there is a new arena deal in place in Sacramento. That means the Kings will not be headed to Seattle to become the “Sonics Redux”. One of the people on the trip with us to Scandinavia suggested that keeping the Kings in Northern California was a good thing for the NBA and for Sacramento itself and that the best thing the folks in Seattle could do would be to find a way to buy one of the other small-market/struggling teams in the league. His suggestions were:

Memphis
Milwaukee

Interestingly, both Memphis and Milwaukee have lost pro basketball teams in the past. The Memphis Tams of the old ABA never drew well even with the promotional antics of Charles O. Finley as their owner and with Adolph Rupp as their GM/Team President/Factotum. The old Milwaukee Hawks became the St. Louis Hawks, which then became the Atlanta Hawks.

The Grizzlies ranked 19th in the NBA in home attendance last year averaging 16,624 fans per game and playing to 92% of seating capacity. Meanwhile, the Bucks finished 27th in the NBA in home attendance last year averaging 15,035 fans per game and playing only to 80% of seating capacity.

[Aside: The Atlanta Hawks ranked 26th in the NBA in home attendance last year averaging 15,125 fans per game and playing to 81% of seating capacity. If anyone thinks the Grizzlies or the Bucks might move to “greener pastures”, I would think that someone would have to throw the Hawks into that mix.]

The Grizzlies have relatively new owners so it is difficult to understand why they might be motivated to sell the team to a “Seattle-based group” and from what I read in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Bucks have a very restrictive set of clauses in their arena lease there which would make buying out that lease very difficult and very costly.

Basically, I think the good folks in Seattle may be saved from themselves for the moment because of the lack of availability of an NBA franchise that can pick up and move to whatever new arena the good folks in the Great Northwest might design for the new team. Seattle has to have better things to do with its tax dollars.

As a throwaway line, my traveling companion also suggested that the NBA might just expand and add a team in Seattle and another team somewhere else. He said, that would solve the problem and obviate the need for franchise relocations. My feeling about that is succinctly stated:

What a horrendous idea!

The NBA is already talent-diluted to the point where some of the teams are not even interesting to watch. Three prime examples of teams not worth the time it takes to settle into an easy chair and the effort to use the remote to find their games on television are:

The Washington Wizards
The Charlotte Bobcats/Hornets
The Detroit Pistons

I have no “reading” on the thinking of David Stern’s handpicked successor, Adam Silver, but I hope that in the privacy of his home he recognizes that the product that he is selling is competitive sports entertainment and that there are not enough top-flight basketball players in the world to provide that kind of quality sports entertainment with any more teams in the league. In fact, I would hope that in the privacy of his home, he realizes that the NBA would be a better league – albeit one that generates a bit less revenue – with only 24 teams instead of 30 teams…

Here is an actual headline on a website that I did NOT click on:

“Updated Mock Draft 2014”

My feelings on mock drafts more than a week before the actual NFL Draft are well known to any regular readers here. This headline is offensive to me because it is 11 months prior to the draft AND BECAUSE the fact that the headline says it is an “updated” mock draft, that means there had to be an even earlier version. There ought to be a law… This headline provided justification for bringing back public floggings.

Finally, here is an item from Gregg Drinnan in the Kamloops Daily News:

“Security guards in Oklahoma City caught a guy trying to steal a Zamboni earlier this week. As Robert Cox of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette pointed out: ‘As with most Zamboni-related crimes, police said alcohol was a factor.’ “

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

We get home on 17 June. That probably means I will be back on the air on 19 June – given the vagaries of jet lag. Please come back then.

Stay well.

According to reports, the Rutgers “search committee” hired a headhunter to seek out and suggest candidates. Then, reportedly, someone on the “search committee” inserted the name of the person who was ultimately selected for the job. Question:

What were you paying the headhunter to do? Why did the “search committee” even bother with that formality?

Rutgers says that it hired the preeminent private security firm in the country to do a background check on the new AD prior to announcing that she was hired. Question:

This background check could not uncover the kinds of information that is now all over the Internet? What does this firm do for its actual living?

Since Rutgers just hired a new basketball coach who claimed to have graduated from Rutgers – but actually did not do that –, you might think that Rutgers would be really careful about the background of its new hire as the AD.

On the other hand, if Rutgers could not determine that its new coach had not actually graduated from the school itself, maybe the folks in charge are dumber than ashtrays…

As of now, the new AD has adopted the “Sergeant Schultz Defense”; she knows nothing about any of the allegations that have surfaced – ignoring of course the matter of public record about that court case where she was the defendant for “pregnancy discrimination”. Hey, that tactic has been working for the current Attorney General, the former Secretary of State and just about everyone associated with management in the IRS.

As of now, the President of Rutgers is standing by his hiring decision – just as the President of the US is standing behind all the folks mentioned above. The difference is that there is no one person who can tap the President of the US on the shoulder and tell him to vacate the office; that can happen to the President of Rutgers because it is a State University and that State has a Governor, who may want to run for President someday and a Legislature that always is interested in its re-election.

Let me be clear; I do not know if any or all of the allegations about the new AD are true or exaggerated or downright false. I do know that Rutgers University is one small step short of becoming a laughingstock. It really does need some adult supervision…

Ron Jaworski – in addition to his duties on ESPN – is a co-owner of the Philadelphia Soul of the Arena Football League. The Soul just purchased from the Arena League the rights to spread the Arena League to China and the tab for that purchase reportedly is “less than $1M”. The idea is to put some games in China to generate interest and then to form teams that have a few Chinese players on each roster and then… It will start with existing AFL teams playing exhibition games in China later this year (perhaps with a Chinese player or two in the games) and then expand to having as many as six teams playing a formal schedule in China starting next year with native Chinese players.

I have no idea if arena football will take hold in China, but if it does, Ron Jaworski and his co-owners of the Philadelphia Soul are going to look like financial geniuses…

Baseball in NYC continues to have attendance issues and most of it has to do with pricing. Consider:

Next weekend, the Yankees host the Red Sox; at the moment, these teams are atop the AL East. According to the NY Post the Yankees cannot sell out those games and are offering a promotion of buy three tix and get four more free. Wow! The Yankees and Red Sox cannot sell out the stadium on a weekend…

The Mets – again according to reports – are dumping their unsold tickets on StubHub to sell at reduced prices. Think about what this says to Mets’ fans:

If a fan bought tix at full price ahead of time and now needs to sell them because he/she cannot attend the game, the Mets will assure that he/she will not get face value in return for those tix because the Mets increased the supply available.

If a fan ever buys tix this way and gets them for a discount, why would he/she ever pay full price to buy them in advance?

You know, it is a good thing that NBA players do not grow “playoff beards” as has become de rigueur in the NHL. Given how long it takes to get through playoff series with all the days off in between games, some players would look like ZZ Top band members if they grew beards and their team made it to the Seventh Game of the Finals.

Optimists think that this is the best of all possible worlds. Pessimists are afraid that the optimists are correct. Realists always realize that things could be worse than they are. Consider:

You are at a baseball game. It is the third inning and the schedule does not have the visiting team coming back to this city for the rest of the season. It starts to rain and the rain is coming down by the bucketful. The grounds crew scurries to get the tarp on the infield and you know that you are in for a long wait. They are not going to call this game off unless it is absolutely necessary…

Now a realist knows that things could be worse. Imagine after sitting in your seat watching the drops fall for 45 minutes when you look up at the Jumbotron to see that they are running the opening credits for Field of Dreams. At that point, you know that things just got worse…

Syndicated columnist Norman Chad had an insightful observation about the intense coverage of the NFL Draft on ESPN:

“They kept running a crawl that read ‘For more extensive coverage, log on to ESPN.com’. More extensive coverage? What do they provide on there, DNA analysis?”

Finally, here is an item from Brad Rock’s column, Rock On, in the Deseret News:

“Ex-Ute assistant coach Tim Davis made news last week when he referred to Alabama coach Nick Saban as ‘the devil himself’.

“Saban said he was disappointed and never intended to offend. In that light, he has since been downgraded in the BCS (Beelzebub Criteria Scale) rankings from “Destroyer’ to ‘ Just Another Ornery Coach’.”

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

On the heels of stories that forced the NCAA to repudiate the early stages of the investigation and to fire the lead investigator and on the heels of “testimony” by Nevin Shapiro that he broke every rule and every precept of the NCAA’s “student-athlete, there was a story last weekend in the Miami Herald that makes all of that look like kindergarten recess. That report said:

Shapiro – convicted and sitting in a jail cell convicted of securities fraud and running a Ponzi scheme – sent a letter to a Florida judge saying that he (Shapiro) committed perjury when he testified against another man who had been charged with “running a $132M check cashing scheme”. [Aside: I have difficulty wrapping my mind around a check cashing scheme that could possibly involve $132M but I guess that just means I do not think big in terms of criminal activities.]

Shapiro also claims in that letter that his own “high profile lawyers” knew he was going to lie under oath and knowingly allowed him to do so.

Nevin Shapiro is the lynchpin in the NCAA’s investigation into wrongdoing by the University of Miami.

If you would like to read what the NCAA’s star witness is all about according to the latest information available to the Miami Herald, here is the link you want.

You have to have heard the old adage that politics makes for strange bedfellows. An item posted on the The Sports Economist blog on 21 May surely makes that point. The way that the Minnesota legislature figured that it would pay the State’s portion of the construction costs for the new Vikings’ stadium in Minneapolis was to create new “e-gambling opportunities” in the State and then to tax those new activities such that the revenue would cover the State’s obligation. That sounds like a plan; no new taxes; no spending cuts to pay for a stadium; yes, there will be a new stadium. What could go wrong?

The only glitch seems to be that the actual revenue stream from this new revenue stream is not a tsunami; rather it more resembles a trickle and that leaves the politicians with a problem because they promised the good people of Minnesota that stadium funding would not come out of the State’s general fund. Ooops…

And so, what has happened is that politicians are now going around the state to “drum up interest” in the e-gambling ventures along with folks from the gaming industry and the folks who will benefit from the profits after taxes to the State. These are the same politicians who would rather suffer an aneurism than come out publicly in favor of sports betting in Minnesota, but now that there is a need for more tax revenue without raising existing tax rates on people or businesses, they are going around telling folks it is a good idea to play these “e-gambling games”.

In related news, Diogenes just declared the Minnesota legislature a barren patch when it comes to truly honest men…

Speaking of sports gambling, most of the Internet sportsbooks have the Over/Under for the NY Jets win total in 2013 at 6.5. In no way do I think that the Jets are going to play in the Super Bowl game that will happen in their home stadium next February; at the same time, the Over bet here might make some sense. The Jets have a relatively soft landing for the end of the season after their bye-week in early November. Here are their final 7 games:

At Buffalo
At Baltimore
Vs. Miami
Vs. Oakland
At Carolina
Vs. Cleveland
At Miami

Folks, that is not “Murderer’s Row”; Baltimore and Carolina look to be playoff contenders in 2013 but the other five opponents do not. There could be 4 and possibly 5 wins in that mixture meaning that the Jets would not have to be world-beaters in September and October to make it to 7 wins for the season.

Over the weekend, the NASCAR race had what has been described as a “costly caution” in the final laps. That late caution caused several fans to comment about NASCAR racing and its rules things like this:

The last five laps of a race should continue regardless of crashes. We don’t want any more caution flag finishes.

There shouldn’t be any caution flags in the last five laps. Let them finish the race going around the wreckage.

I imagine that it is frustrating for fans to watch a 600-mile race – as they did last weekend – only to find out in the final minutes that the race is going to be decided in large measure by a yellow caution flag late in the race because of a multi-car crash. Nevertheless, sanity has to prevail here; NASCAR cannot establish a system whereby racecars finish a race dodging wreckage because that would also put first responders who may need to be on the track to do things like put out fires or pull seriously injured drivers from wrecked vehicles in jeopardy. Marie Antoinette is rightfully scorned for saying that starving peasants who had no bread should just eat cake; NASCAR fans who want no caution flags at the end of races and who want cars to dodge the wreckage are saying about injured drivers:

Just let them bleed.

Finally, Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times expressed his sorrow for the “bad fortune” of Tom Brady after he reportedly won $25K on the Kentucky Derby:

“So that makes it three Super Bowl rings, a supermodel wife, a $57mil contract – and now a serendipitous Derby windfall.

“When is this poor guy going to catch a break?”

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

“… 4 women qualified for the Indianapolis 500 this year for the first time ever and that did not earn them a mention in a SC rant? You write about NASCAR once in a while so why not open-wheel racing?

“If you need an angle for a comment, check out the Smith Curse for the 500. No one named Smith has ever qualified there.”

Mea culpa! I did not mention anything about the Indy 500 for a simple reason. I have completely lost interest in the race over the past decade or so. I was never an avid follower if Indy Car racing and what interest I ever had has waned to practically zero. Therefore, I was not aware that there would be 4 women drivers in the field this year – which would have opened the door to some kind of snarky comment regarding driving habits in shopping center parking lots – and I had never heard of the ‘Smith Curse” until this morning.

A quick check reveals that there is indeed such a “curse”…

Golfers are lawyering up in the wake of the announcement by the USGA that “anchored putters” will be outlawed in 2016. As I understand it, they are anticipating a similar pronouncement by the PGA Tour at which time they will claim that the folks who run golf are threatening their livelihood. Before any of this happens formally, I am begging the judge who inherits the anticipated case to allow TV cameras in the courtroom so that the world can see and hear how a bunch of privileged folks on both sides of this case managed to find a way to take their spitting match into the judicial system and to consume judicial resources on this matter. Public shame for all parties sounds like a good idea to me.

I should not have to remind you what happened to the folks who run golf the last time they had a major case in the court system. That was when they would not allow Casey Martin to use a golf cart in tournaments because it violated some royal and ancient principle of the game. They had golfers testifying that walking was an essential part of the game and that the purity and the integrity of golf had to supersede trivial matters such as the Americans With Disabilities Act. It took the Supreme Court of the United States to put an end to that pissing contest and to inform the Golf Goofs that Federal law was indeed applicable to their little game.

The fact that Tim Tebow remains an NFL free agent allows columnists around the country to maintain focus on that situation. Consider these two recent remarks:

“Say what? I don’t understand what Chuck Norris means when he says he sees some of himself in Tim Tebow. The out-of-work quarterback Tebow has been called a lot of things but, far as I can tell, never a bad actor.” [Bob Molinaro, Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot]

And…

“Tim Tebow remains unsigned. ‘Hey, you know he’s in trouble if even I can’t help him,’ said God.” [Greg Cote, Miami Herald]

I found this cogent observation in the midst of Gregg Drinnan’s Keeping Score column over the weekend in the Kamloops Daily News:

“How young are the Houston Astros? They cancelled their annual player wives charity gala due to a lack of wives.”

The Astros Wives Organization has sponsored a Black Ties and Baseball Caps Gala for the last couple of decades with proceeds going to a local women’s center that “provides shelter, counseling and advocacy services to survivors of violence.” The Astros, the Astros Foundation (the entity that funnels money to the community and sets the goals for Astros’ charitable activities), the Astros Wives Organization (now disbanded) and the charity involved naturally have completely different stories to tell as to how all of this came about. I tried to read some of the articles in the Houston press on the subject but came away with the sense that until it gets sorted out, Gregg Drinnan’s synopsis would have to suffice.

You know when you to out to a baseball game, you need to have a hot dog. It just does not seem as if the experience is complete without a hot dog. My problem is that I grew up in an era where hot dogs were served by roaming vendors carrying containers of nearly boiling water with dozens of dogs soaking in that hot liquid. The buns were in another compartment; when you ordered a dog from the roaming vendor, he would take a “still-wet dog” and slap it on the soggy bun, slather it with yellow mustard put it on a small sheet of waxed paper and collect your money. That was a ballpark hot dog.

Today you have to get hot dogs from concession stands and hot dogs have gone way upscale – to the point where I hardly recognize that I am having my “ballpark hot dog”. Consider these two upscale hot dog options available in major league parks:

At Orioles Park at Camden Yards, you can get a Triple Decker Dog. This is a hot dog smothered in pulled pork and topped off with a single slap of thick cut bacon.

At Chase Field in Arizona, you can get something called a Tailgate on a Plate. This is an “extreme loaded dog” served on a warm bun and covered with baked beans, tomato and cheese.

They both sound good – but that is not the ballpark hot dog of my youth…

Finally, here is a comment about current events tied to the world of sports from Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel:

“It’s now being reported that those in his administration knew all about the IRS malfeasance but didn’t tell President Obama the magnitude of the scandal. Geez, who does the president think he is – Joe Paterno? If this were an NCAA investigation, the White House would be cited for lack of institutional control.”

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

I think that the Niners will need to find someone on their roster – or available in some way – who can be a deep threat and keep defenses honest. They run the ball effectively – but that efficiency will be impacted if defensive coordinators do not have to protect the entire field. The Niners have Anquan Boldin and Mario Manningham on the roster as WRs; both are experienced and accomplished; neither is a consistent deep threat. The other WRs on the depth chart for now (Chad Hall, AJ Jenkins, Ricardo Lockette, Quinton Patton and Kyle Williams) combined to catch 14 passes for 212 yards and 1 TD last year – - and all of that production came from Kyle Williams. I am guessing that the Niners might be shopping for a speedy WR…

The NBA playoffs are proceeding at a glacial pace. The teams left in the playoffs have had enough time between games for the players to have read War and Peace and Moby Dick by now. Notwithstanding the schedule-stalling, there are NBA items to consider this morning.

The LA Clippers fired their coach, Vinny Del Negro, despite making the playoffs this year. This is Del Negro’s second stop on the coaching circuit; his time in Chicago was about as plain vanilla as one could script. In two seasons with the Bulls, the team record was 41-41 in both seasons. In his first year with the Clippers, the team went 32-50. In the strike-shortened season, the Clippers then went 40-26 and this year the team finished 56-26. In franchise history, the Clippers had never won 50 games in a single season.

The Clippers have been around since the 1970-71 season when they were the Buffalo Braves; they have had 24 head coaches in those 43 years; only two coaches have had winning records during their tenure with the Clippers:

Larry Brown was 64-53 in 1992-93 for a .547 winning percentage
Vinny Del Negro was 128-102 from 2010-13 for a .557 winning percentage.

The Clippers’ franchise record is 1303 – 2175 for a team winning percentage of .375. I am not trying to make the case that Vinny Del Negro is a great coach; he has a long way to go to demonstrate that. Nevertheless, using Wall Street terminology, his winning percentage is 182 basis points higher than the franchise norm. Normally, that does not get a guy fired.

Meanwhile, the Charlotte Bobcats are going to reclaim their nickname “Hornets”. The Charlotte franchise started out at the Hornets but the franchise moved to New Orleans after the then-owner and the city had a major falling-out. This year, the New Orleans Hornets decided to become the New Orleans Pelicans for reasons that are surely unclear to mere mortals. That left the “Hornets” nickname/mascot up for grabs and Michael Jordan grabbed the name for his Charlotte team beginning in the 2014-15 season. The Bobcats – soon to be the Hornets – are a franchise in need of something to generate fan interest.

Here are chilling data:

The Bobcats came into the NBA as an expansion franchise in 2004. Only once – in the 2009-10 season – has the team finished over .500.

In the strike-shortened season of 2011-12, the Bobcats finished 7-59, which is the lowest winning percentage for a season in the history of the NBA.

The franchise definitely needs to generate more fan interest/enthusiasm. If you live in the Charlotte area and happen to be interested in buying season tix for next year, you can get yourself deal. The Bobcats will sell you a season ticket for each of the next two seasons guaranteeing no price increase over that time and giving you first dibs on your seating preference for the time when the name change happens. Oh, and you also get a warm-up jacket with the Michael Jordan logo on it that says “Buzz City” – foreshadowing the return of the Hornets. The Bobcats only played to 80.3% of capacity this season so there are probably plenty of good seats available…

It should not surprise anyone to learn that the NBA markets its individual players as stars and that is the way it keeps itself front-and-center on outlets like ESPN. This year has not been kind to the stars that the NBA tries to market.

Rajon Rondo had to have knee surgery about 4 months ago.

Kobe Bryant tore his Achilles tendon as the Lakers lost in the playoffs.

Russell Westbrook hurt his knee in the playoffs and the Thunder lost out.

Derrick Rose never played a minute all season long for the Bulls.

I read a piece somewhere about the upcoming NBA Draft and the thread of the piece was that the “draft stock” for UCLA guard, Shabazz Muhammad, was cratering. When he agreed to play at UCLA last year, many regarded him as THE high school prospect in the country and everyone was sure he was a “one-and-done” player. Now, there are questions about his defense, his value as a teammate and the like. I saw UCLA play about 3 times last season and I have to say that Muhammad never jumped out at me as a player that NBA teams would tank a season to acquire.

The knock on Muhammad as a less than outstanding defensive player is justified; just looking at the body language – and ignoring the results – it appears as if he is much more engaged in the game when he has the ball in his hands as opposed to when the guy in front of him has the ball. The other thing that impressed me was that he scores a lot because he shoots a lot – the Carmelo Anthony playing model. I found these numbers that indicate I was not that far off base:

In 32 games last year, he took 456 shots (14.3 per game) in order to score 17.9 points per game. Those numbers are not horrible – until you juxtapose them with…

In 32 games last year, he handed out 27 assists (0.8 per game) and he is a guard.

Finally, here is a comment from Mike Bianchi in the Orlando Sentinel:

“Did you see where ‘Iron Man 3’ made $175 million on its opening weekend and has already netted $700 million worldwide? This is believed to be the most money made by a stiff, robotic, heavy-legged humanoid since the Magic acquired Kelvin Cato.”

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

A. The impending ban on anchored putters – and –

B. The Sergio Garcia/Tiger Woods feud.

When I retrieved my Washington Post this morning, I was not sure how it happened but Sally Jenkins’ column today deals with exactly those two topics. I am tempted to explain this happenstance by saying that “great minds run in similar channels” – but I doubt that Ms. Jenkins would appreciate being dragged down to my level. I could invoke the concept of a Vulcan mind-meld – but Leonard Nimoy has not been seen in the DC area in the past couple of days, so… Let me say without reservation that Sally Jenkins’ column deserves to be read in its entirety.

I would only want to pose one additional question with regard to each of these topics:

A. Why is an anchored putter something that jeopardizes the history and traditions of golf but carbon-composite shafts and driver heads twice the size of a Big Mac do not?

B. Has the Sergio Garcia/Tiger Woods feud yet reached the level of vitriol exhibited in the movie Mean Girls or does that silliness await the next chapter?

Brian Urlacher announced his retirement yesterday. On Pardon the Interruption, Tony Kornheiser said he does not believe that decision will stick and that Urlacher will sign on with a team sometime later this summer. [He speculated that it would be with the Patriots.] Urlacher said yesterday that he thinks he can still play but not with the passion and the level of performance that he used to bring to the field; his play last year would seem to confirm the diminished level of performance part of that self-analysis. Fundamentally, I hope Kornheiser is wrong on this one; Brian Urlacher has been a great player for a lot of years and I really would not like to see him “floundering” on the field as his final games unfold. Bonne chance, Brian Urlacher…

There will be a change of venue for the Military Bowl this year. In case you cannot keep all the bowl games straight, the Military Bowl is the one played here in Washington DC between Christmas and New Year’s Day; it generates a small amount of fanfare prior to the game; but fundamentally, they could not fill the stadium even if they stapled $100 bills to the tickets and gave them away on street corners. The venue for the game had been RFK Stadium for all of its glorious history – going all the way back to 2008. This year, the game will take place in Annapolis at Navy Marine Corps Memorial Stadium on the campus of the US Naval Academy. The combatants in this game will be:

1. A team from C-USA not yet specified but not the conference champion

2. The 8th place team in the ACC

As ACC teams finish out the season, is it possible that one of them might tank a late game and finish ninth in the conference just to avoid having to participate in this silliness on 27 December?

RFK Stadium seats about 55,000 folks for a football game. Navy Marine Corps Memorial Stadium seats 34,000. If you wonder why the organizers might agree to play in a smaller venue thereby lowering the ceiling on potential ticket revenue, I will set an Over/Under line on the actual attendance at the game at 16,000 souls – and that assumes decent weather.

Bob Molinaro had this interesting look-ahead to the college football season next Fall in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot recently:

“On paper: The SEC schedule-maker has improved the odds of Alabama three-peating as national football champion. For the second year in a row, the Tide doesn’t have Florida, Georgia or South Carolina on the schedule.”

That fact is sure to fuel a bunch of conspiracy theories in various college football hotbeds around the country, as the season gets underway. Bob Molinaro had another item related to college football that has little to do with possible conspiracy theories but does present college football – and indeed collegiate athletics in the revenue sports – in a smarmy light. Consider:

“Kid’s stuff: Texas is the latest football power to offer a scholarship to 6-foot-1, 217-pound Louisiana prospect Dylan Moses, who also has offers from LSU, Alabama and Florida. Why is this worth noting? Because Moses, projected as a running back or linebacker, is an eighth-grader.”

In the NBA, the Dwight Howard soap opera has begun. People wonder where he will play next year; sportscasters track his every move to see where he goes and to whom he speaks; his Tweets are parsed as if they were verses in the Book of Revelation; “insiders” offer opinion based on “facts” that we the public are not allowed to know about where he will go next year. And, Dwight Howard seems to revel in this spotlight.

Memo to Dwight Howard: You run the risk of over-exposure here and turning yourself from a “person of interest” to a “person of tedium”. If you continue to behave in what some might call a “narcissistic way”, you might not like how that ends up. See Owens, Terrell as an example…

Jay Leno had this to say about Dwight Howard’s personal life and his inability to hit free throws:

“Dwight Howard, who reportedly has had four children by four different mothers, is expecting a fifth child with a fifth woman. Apparently, his aim in the bedroom is better than it is at the foul line”

Finally, here is a comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World Herald:

“Dwyane Wade donned a floral number by Versace for a Miami Heat postgame press conference. You know a guy is secure in his masculinity when he chooses the same outfit that Charlize Theron wore to the Oscars.”

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

When I read about this, I pictured a UPS truck backing into RG III’s driveway with a driver spending a half hour shuttling boxes from the truck to the front door. It would be like Christmas morning in May as RG III and his fiancée opened all those boxes to find out that their wedding registry had already been satisfied. How nice. And then, I looked at that situation through the other end of the telescope…

Imagine if a box showed up at the home of JaMarcus Russell and the shipping label said that it came from “Lifelong Raiders Fan”. Here is the question:

Should JaMarcus call the Hazmat Squad or the Bomb Disposal Unit?

Speaking obliquely of the Raiders, I noticed that they signed free-agent punter, Chris Kluwe – late of the Minnesota Vikings. The Raiders lost Shane Lechler to free agency about a month ago; they need a punter to replace him; and for Kluwe, that is going to be a problem. Replacing Shane Lechler is not going to be an easy task.

Allow me an interlude here… Far too many folks in the sports radio business – and even some writers – use the terms “Pro Bowl player” and “All Pro” as synonyms. They are not synonyms; in fact, sometimes they are not even close.

A “Pro Bowl player” is one who is invited to play in the Pro Bowl. That means two squads of 46 players – or 92 individuals – at a minimum will have that label. Actually, there are always more than 92 players in any given year because lots of folks invited to play in the game opt not to for a variety of reasons so someone else gets tapped and both of those players carry the “Pro Bowl ” label.

In any year, there are exactly 24 “All Pro” players. There is one at each position on the field; that player is regarded as the best in the league at his position for that year.

With that distinction in mind, consider this thumbnail sketch of the career of Shane Lechler:

Having entered the NFL in 2000, he just finished his 13th season.

Shane Lechler has been the All Pro punter 9 times in 13 seasons.

Sticking with pro football for a moment, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a transcript of a Q&A session with Mike Ditka. I think the most interesting part of that session was the part that had nothing to do with how the Bears might do in 2013 or about pro football in general; the reporter asked Mike Ditka if people would ever see Mike Ditka on Twitter. Here is what Iron Mike had to say about that:

“You will never see me [on Twitter]. Somebody else might do some things, but not me. I text, though. I got to the point where I can text, I can call and do those things. So I’m getting pretty good. I really don’t want anyone to know what I’m doing. I really don’t think what I’m doing is that important. People don’t have to know what I’m doing. It’s no one’s business but mine.”

For the record, Mike Ditka is ahead of me. I am not on Twitter and I do not text. I have a phone; and if I want to contact you, I will place a call to you and we will discuss whatever it is that we need to communicate on. How twentieth century is that?

However, Mike Ditka and I are absolutely on the same page when it comes to the idea of constantly telling other people what we are doing. I never do that; I cannot imagine how boring anyone’s life might be that they would care about what I am doing. It is not a privacy issue with me; it is a fundamental inability to comprehend why anyone other than I would care to know.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida must be a focal point for swimming and diving competitions in the country. Anyone who had read these rants for a while knows that I do not follow swimming as a sport and that I do not consider diving even to be a sport since its winners are determined by judges and not by an objective set of measures. So how did I conclude that Fort Lauderdale was a focal point for these sports? Consider these two items from Greg Cote of the Miami Herald:

“A USA Grand Prix diving meet happened in Fort Lauderdale. Olympic divers, don’t take it personally, but you have our attention for two weeks once every four years, and barely then. Don’t push it.”

And…

“The International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale is threatening to relocate unless the city upgrades its facilities. Lauderdale residents who regularly visit the Hall are upset. Both of them.”

Finally, after OJ Simpson appeared on TV last week testifying in a hearing where he seeks a new trial on the charges that sent him to a Nevada State Prison, Jimmy Kimmel had this to say about OJ:

“The most notable thing to come out of the trial is that O.J. has put on a lot of weight in prison. I think he found the real killers and ate them.”

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

According to a recent report on CBSSports.com, it appears as if the price tag for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games to be held in Sochi on the coast of the Black Sea will rise to $51B. That number is staggering for two reasons:

1. There is no way the Games will draw $51B in revenue; they will be lucky to generate 15% of that number.

2. By comparison to the Summer Games, the Winter Games should cost less to stage because there are fewer events and fewer venues needed.

According to the report at CBSSports.com:

“State-controlled companies and tycoons have underwritten more than half the cost. In some cases the tycoons are taking big losses to stay on President Vladimir Putin’s good side…”

Gazprom is the largest natural gas producing company in the world; it is spending $3B on a gas pipeline to deliver gas to Sochi in time for the games. It may be critically important to have plenty of energy on hand next February because the average high temperature in Sochi in February is 49 degrees and the average low is 38 degrees. Indeed, many events will occur in the mountains outside “metropolitan Sochi”, but the potential need for cooling on a massive scale has to be considered.

For perspective here, please consider the words of Dan Jenkins regarding the Winter Olympics:

“Part of the charm of the Winter Olympics is that ice skating and all the rest of those Olympic sports disappear for four years at a time.”

Juxtapose that nugget of truth with $51B and … Oh well!

If you find that news disturbing in the sense that you have the feeling that some smarmy folks are making a lot of money on the Sochi venture that has nothing to do with staging an international sporting event, there is some counter-balancing good news to report today. Diogenes might have found his completely honest man if he had lived long enough to be around today and to shine his lantern into the eyes of Jeremy Affeldt. Let me explain.

Yahoo!Sports reports that Affeldt (relief pitcher, San Francisco Giants) found that he was getting paid $500K more than he was supposed to be paid. The basis for the extra pay was a clerical error by the Giants’ front office staff. After discussions with both the MLBPA and the Giants, Affeldt learned that the contract was ironclad; it was the Giants’ error and they signed it; he was entitled to $500K more than what he and his agent had agreed to sign on for. Sit down for the next chapter…

Affeldt told the Giants he wanted to re-do the contract and to put it back to the salary level that both sides agreed to in previous negotiations. Here is the link to the story in case you just want to feel that there are some good folks still left out there.

Five years ago, I would have said that the following item could only have happened to the Cincinnati Bengals but the Bengals seem to have cleaned up their act significantly and it would be surprising to see something like this happen to the team. Today, I have to say that I am not shocked even a little bit that this happened to the NY Jets.

The Jets signed Mike Goodson (RB) to a free agent deal about 6 weeks ago; the contract is worth $7M over three years and indeed the Jets do need running backs. I did not read any reports – even in the NY tabloids – hinting that Goodson put the Jets over-the-top and made them serious contenders for the Super Bowl that will happen in their home stadium next February. Nevertheless, most folks saw this as a solid move by the Jets.

Then at about 3:00 AM, a truck driver spotted a vehicle stopped in the center lane of a highway in New Jersey and called “911”. When the gendarmes arrived, they found Goodson – not the driver of the vehicle – in such a condition that they transported him by ambulance to a nearby hospital. In the process of doing that, police found a “small amount of marijuana” on his person. The police found the driver to be intoxicated (allegedly of course at this time) and searched the vehicle wherein things got worse. They found:

More marijuana (not shocking but certainly not good)

A loaded .45 semi-automatic handgun (makes things worse) – and –

Hollow point bullets (banned by the Geneva Convention in warfare)

I suspect that Mike Goodson will have a hearing with the NFL authorities in addition to a hearing in a judicial setting before all of this is resolved.

Finally, since I started today with news on the intersection of sports and economics, let me close with an item from Brad Rock in the Deseret News:

“Apparently the recession has even reached the University of Oregon.

“Despite receiving millions in support from Nike founder Phil Knight, the school is still finding ways to nickel and dime people. An Internet report last month said the cheer squad charged $5 to watch its tryouts.

“Rumored to be coming: a $7.50 fee to watch the marching band practice playing ‘Louie, Louie’ for next year’s halftime.”

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