The Sports Curmudgeon

At this time next week, half of the first round of March Madness will be in the books and there will certainly be a “bracket buster” or three to deal with then.  If you believe in omens, there is a result in the books already that may portend lots of upsets.  While few folks have been paying close attention, Miami (OH) had compiled a record of 31-0 playing a weak schedule in the MAC and a weak out-of-conference schedule.  Notwithstanding the schedule, winning 31 games in a row is noteworthy.

Obviously, Miami was the #1 seed in the MAC Tournament, and it proceeded to lose in the opening round of that tournament to UMass.  The tournament winner there gets an automatic March Madness slot; traditionally, the MAC does not get any of the at-large invitations from the Selection Committee; so, be prepared for “controversy” next Monday based on Miami (OH) getting in March Madness or being left out.  It makes no difference what the Selection Committee might decide to do there; it will be controversial.

There was another interesting possibility that was dashed by Miami’s loss in the MAC Tournament.  Miami is coached by Travis Steele; the second place team in the MAC this season was Akron and Akron is coached by John Groce; Travis Steele and John Groce are half-brothers, and it appeared that the two would square off in the MAC Tournament finals.  Alas, that storyline went down the drain.

Moving on …  The previously announced trade of Maxx Crosby from the Raiders to the Ravens fell through at the eleventh hour when the Ravens backed out of the deal.  That is unusual all by itself, but this incident would seem to have “history”.  If I assume that the reporting is correct, the Ravens had Crosby in their facilities being examined for his physical readiness while they were also interviewing/negotiating with Trey Hendrickson at the same time.  When Hendrickson and the Ravens reached agreement, Crosby’s rehab from meniscus surgery was conveniently thought to be unsatisfactory.  [Aside: The surgeon who operated on Crosby has publicly refuted that assessment, but that is not all that surprising.]

So, we have an annulment of an announced trade and the reported happenstance that the Ravens were negotiating with a replacement for the “previously acquired” Crosby while Crosby was “on the premises”.  I guess I could just think that sort of behavior is “unusual” or possibly “just a tad in poor taste” were it not for something that rings in the back of my mind.

Last season, the Ravens traded Jaire Alexander to the Eagles in exchange for a “pick swap”.   About 2 weeks after the trade, Alexander announced his retirement from the NFL citing a need to work on his “mental health”.  Again, that could just be as it seems to be.  But because it is the Ravens’ involvement in that equally unusual situation that makes me wonder …

Switching gears …  I must admit that I do not understand the thought processes of the NY Jets’ braintrust.  The Jets traded for Geno Smith for a minimal price – – pick swap at the end of the upcoming NFL Draft.  Granted, the price paid for Smith was minimal; but why make that trade at all?

• Geno Smith will be 36 years old in the middle of next year’s NFL regular season.
• The Jets need a lot more than Geno Smith to be a playoff team.
• The Raiders are one of the few teams worse than the Jets and the Raiders are the team that is trading Geno Smith away for next to no return.

The odds on Geno Smith hanging on with the Jets for a sufficient amount of time for the rest of the team to be built up around him to the point of respectability are long indeed.  So, I don’t understand why that trade was even discussed let alone consummated from the Jets’ side of the table.  Here is my thought process if I were the Jets’ GM:

• We need a QB – – badly – – just as we have for about 25 years.
• We also have holes all over our roster.
• We have a nice draft pick this year – – but the QB pickings there are not all that enticing; so, maybe we have to wait a year to get our “franchise QB”.
• So, why not take a flier on a young QB who has not shown much in his NFL career, but who might be a “late bloomer”?  Who might fit that description?
  • • Mac Jones – – would need to trade for him as was the case with Geno Smith but his contract is minimal.
    • Trey Lance – – an unrestricted free agent
    • Tanner McKee – – would have to trade for him too and again a minimal contract to absorb.
    • Mitchell Trubisky – – an unrestricted free agent

Let me be clear; those QBs are longshots to earn the label “late bloomer” and become a strong starting QB in the NFL.  But maybe one of them might do so and I think those odds are better than the odds of Geno Smith being an active player by the time the Jets “get good”.

And just as I was trying to think about why the Jets made the trade that they did, I read another report saying that the Jets might be interested in Carson Wentz – – an unrestricted free agent by the way – – who is 33 years old.  I just don’t get it.

Finally, since today is Friday the 13^th, consider this advice from author Judith Viorst:

“Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive, and irrational-but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?”

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

 

 

The explosion of ways and places to wager on sports has had positive outcomes like increased tax revenues for jurisdictions and it has had negative outcomes too.  I have been a supporter of widely available gambling opportunities not because I deny the negatives or don’t care about any of them; I support legalized sports gambling because any attempt to ban it will simply drive it underground.  People bet on sports whether or not that activity is condoned by law.  I used to call the Federal Law that limited sports betting to Nevada and a couple other states as “The Local Bookies’ Full Employment Act”.

One of the negatives about legalized sports gambling is that sportsbooks continue to look for new types of wagers.  And that seems to have led to the confluence of some circumstances that are harmful to the sports underlying the wagers.  Those two circumstances would be:

1. Player prop bets
2. Ability to make large wagers over a wide range of legal sportsbooks

Here is the problem in a nutshell:

• Players can control their performance virtually assuring the outcome of a player prop bet – – and – – they or their comrades can make big money if they know the outcome of said prop bets.

We have a situation where two MLB pitchers stand accused of purposely throwing a ball outside the strike zone or at a lower velocity than normal on a specific pitch in a game because there are prop bets on such things.  Basketball players took themselves out of games for injury reasons in the first half to assure that their scoring or rebounding totals would be UNDER on the prop bet.  Just the mention of such possible skullduggery is enough to get sports wagering opponents to call for new legislation banning the activity.  And now, there is a report that Major League Soccer (MLS) has banned two players for life after an investigation convinced the MLS leaders that they not only bet on MLS games, they bet on games that they played in.

Specifically, both players made a bet on a game in 2024 where the proposition involved whether Player A would get a yellow card at some point in the game.  Guess what, Player A managed to get such an admonition from the referee so that the bet cashed.  And to add to the drama just a bit more, it seems that an independent investigation into these players and various activities “determined that the players likely shared confidential information with other bettors about their intent to draw yellow cards.”

Reports say that MLS has been working with sportsbooks and various jurisdictions to remove prop bets involving either “yellow cards” or “red cards” because they are so easy to “influence”.  The fact that MLS has banned these players for life is another positive outcome from this mess; without significant negative consequences, these sorts of sideshows will proliferate.

Moving on …  At least some of the folks who used to make up the Washington Post Sports Desk have latched on to new positions with visibility.  The Athletic hired six of the people let go by the Post last month with the intent of covering the Commanders and the Nationals more closely than in the past and by adding two columnists and a seasoned investigative reporter from the Post to The Athletic staff.  Here is the statement by Steven Ginsberg, the Executive Editor of The Athletic, about these new hires:

“We’re excited to announce the hiring of several Washington Post journalists as The Athletic expands its coverage of the Commanders, launches a new Nationals beat and adds to its growing roster of tennis, opinion and investigative reporters. With these moves, we intend to provide fans in Washington with unparalleled coverage of the teams and sports they love.”

Switching gears …  Team USA survived the pool play and will make it to the knockout round as the second place team in their pool.  Italy pulled Team USA into that next round by beating Mexico yesterday by a score of 9-1.  The WBC enters the quarterfinals now where the loser goes home and the winner moves on.  Here are the upcoming games:

• Friday March 13:
  • • Korea vs Dominican Republic
    • USA vs Canada
• Saturday March 14:
  • • Puerto Rico vs Italy
    • Venezuela vs Japan

Finally, this advice from Groucho Marx:

“There’s one way to find out if a man is honest – ask him. If he says, ‘Yes,’ you know he is a crook.”

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

 

 

There are no “sure things” in gambling, but bettors probably thought the WBC baseball game between Italy and Team USA was a “gimme”.

• Team USA was 5.5 run favorite in the game.  I will not pretend to check the spreads on every major league game, but I do not ever recall such a line on a real MLB game.
• On the Money Line, Team USA was the outrageous favorite at minus-1450

Naturally, Italy not only covered the spread; Italy won the game straight up by a score of 8-6.  In fact, the score was 8-0 before Team USA crossed home plate.

The WBC is concluding pool play and with that loss, Team USA might be eliminated from the tournament before the knock-out round.  Italy will play Mexico in the final game of that pool:

• If Italy wins, Team USA will advance to the knock-out round.
• If Mexico wins, then Mexico, Team USA and Italy will all finish with records of 3-1 in pool play and the tiebreaker is more complicated that I want to try to explain here.  Suffice it to say, one of the three teams will be eliminated and there are possibilities where Team USA would be that eliminated squad.

Moving on …  I read a report that said the act of releasing Tua Tagovailoa will impose a dead-money charge for the Dolphins of $99.2M for the 2026 season.  Without going down the rabbit hole of NFL Salary Cap conventions, what that means is that the Dolphins will have that amount of cap space taken up by a player who will not play for them in 2026.  And that staggering amount of dead-money sent me to look at NFL salary cap figures.

In 2026, for the first time, the NFL salary cap will be north of $300M; teams can field a squad that counts as $301.2M in cap-calculated earnings.  That figure represents a little less than half of the so-called national revenues taken in by the league last year; most of that comes from networks paying to air NFL games.  So doing a rough calculation, the NFL’s national revenues last year were in the neighborhood of $19.3B and that figure does not include any of the local revenues for the teams such as ticket sales or parking or concessions or “team merch” or local media deals.

I went looking for the history of the NFL salary cap and found several interesting tidbits:

• The salary cap came into being in 1994 and it was $34.6M.  There are probably close to a dozen players today who are going to make more than that figure in a single season.
• Between 2005 and 2006, the cap made a large percentage jump.  It went from $85.5M to $102M, which is almost a 20% rise in a single year and 2006 was the first time the cap exceeded $100M.
• It took until 2022 for the cap to cross the $200M mark.  The cap jumped from $182.5M to $208.2M then.
• And now, just four years after crossing the $200M level, the cap stands at $301.2M.

In case you were wondering why someone would want to pay multiple billions of dollars to buy into the NFL money making machine …

Switching gears …  The Washington Wizards are the basketball equivalent of a tire fire at the moment.  The team is so obviously tanking that it is embarrassing for anyone to be identified as a Wizards fan.  Combine that with the stark fact that the players they put on the floor need not “dog it” in order to lose; there is a dearth of talent there too.

Last night, the Wizards lost to the Heat in Miami by a score of 150-129.  Even an average NBA team should expect to win a game where it scores 129 points; the Wiz lost by 21 points; that is shameful – – but there is more.

In this game, Heat big man, Bam Adebayo scored 83 points; here is the breakdown:

• He played 41 minutes.
• He was 20 of 43 from the field and 7 of 22 on three-point attempts.
• He was 36 of 43 from the free throw line.

Let me just say that the Wiz left their defense in their baggage at the hotel for this game.  Adebayo now stands second in NBA history for “points in a game”; last night he passed Kobe Bryant who had 81 in a game for the Lakers, and he trails only Wilt Chamberlain whose 100-point output still holds as the NBA high water mark.

Finally, this from P. J. O’Rourke:

“Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.”

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

 

 

The World Baseball Classic is still in “Pool Play” and there are some interesting results to date.  There are eight teams that are undefeated so far:

1. Cuba – – not a huge surprise
2. Dominican Republic – – former WBC Champion
3. Italy – – surprise?
4. Japan – – defending champ
5. Mexico – – OK
6. Puerto Rico – – lots of good players come from here
7. Venezuela  – – surprise?
8.  USA – – no surprise.

And of course there are also five winless teams:

1. Brazil – – baseball is not soccer
2. Colombia – – borders on Brazil – – and on Venezuela
3. Czechia – – no surprise
4. Great Britain – – baseball is not cricket
5. Nicaragua – – surprise

Baseball is an American invention, but it has obviously spread abroad particularly to Latin America and of course to Japan.

When you go to the ballpark to watch a game in person, you need to pay attention because it is possible that you will see something that you’ve never seen before – – or even something that has not happened before.  There may have been a melt-down of similar proportion somewhere in a baseball game in the past, but certainly not in my memory.  The US beat Brazil 15-5 in a WBC game that saw the Brazil pitching staff give up 17 walks.  That is the sort of thing you might expect to see in a high school game where the best pitcher on one of the teams has the flu and can’t suit up; so, the coach has his backup second baseman on the mound.  Wow …

Meanwhile, five teams have earned a slot in March Madness with plenty more conference tournaments on tap for this week.  Already in the field – – and presumably practicing for their first encounter – – are:

1. High Point
2. Long Island University
3. Northern Iowa
4. Queens (NC)
5. Tennessee State.

The play-in games for March Madness start on 17 March.  Should the Iona Gaels qualify, the seeding mavens should have them playing on St. Patrick’s Day, right?

And the NFL has entered free agent season with news/rumors of major trades and potential player releases.  Maxx Crosby and Trent McDuffie are both All-Pro level players and they have been traded in this offseason for draft picks.  Rumors abound that Kyler Murray and Tua Tagovailoa are about to be released from large contracts making them free agents.  Both QBs have been disappointing after signing those big deals and it will be interesting to see if either gets an offer better than a short-term deal heavily incentivized.  And of course, no one knows yet what Aaron Rodgers’ plan for the 2026 NFL season might be.  Last year, he dragged that soap opera on until the start of mandatory minicamp.

I think the Trey Hendrickson situation will be interesting to watch.  According to reports, his status with the Bengals is definitely over and he is unrestricted.  He has recorded double-digit sacks in 4 seasons – – BUT – – he is 31 years old and missed 10 games due to injury last season.

Another interesting one could be Malik Willis.  He has been in the NFL for 4 seasons and has started a total of 6 games.  Only one stat jumps out at you; in the last two seasons with the Packers, Willis completed 70 of his 89 pass attempts – – 78.7%.  That is a small sample size to be sure, but what is interesting is that some reports say he could get an offer for 2 or 3 seasons for somewhere between $35-50M.

Finally, as Dorothy Parker once observed:

“You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.”

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

 

 

If you spend any time browsing the Internet for sports topics, you will run across stories about less-that-fully legal behavior(s) by athletes or coaches or Athletic Directors.  It happens.  However recent news about Cal State – Bakersfield puts together a series of events that is news to me.  Let me set the stage for you:

• The time is last August.
• Men’s head basketball coach, Rod Barnes, got an anonymous note containing this allegation:
  • • “[Asst basketball coach, Kevin Mays] IS TRAFFICKING A GIRL BY THE NAME OF [redacted] HE HAS BEEN TRAFFICKING THIS GIRL SINCE MAY.”
• Barnes reports this to the school’s HR Department.  University police investigated and Mays is now charged with inter alia:
  • • Pimping … and … possession of automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines … and … possession of meth and marijuana with intent to distribute.
• Not surprisingly, Kevin Mays pleads not guilty to all charges, and the investigation goes on so more charges might come forth.

If the story stopped there, I would simply wait to see what sort of plea bargain would wrap this up because that is an unusual set of charges to bargain away.  As they say in the infomercials, “But wait, there’s more…”

Kevin Mays was arrested back in the late summer of 2025 and the Athletic Director at Cal State-Bakersfield, Kyle Condor, was terminated in September.  Condor is suing the school alleging that he was fired after he reported potential “crimes and misconduct” at the school and that he is being made a scapegoat for the mess involving Kevin Mays.

By the way, there is yet one more wrinkle here.  It may mean nothing – – or not.  Remember Coach Barnes – – the guy who got the anonymous note and got the investigation started – – well he stepped down as the head coach at Cal State-Bakersfield after being in the job for 14 years proximal to the timing of Mays’ arrest and Condon’s termination.

As Alice exclaimed during her time in Wonderland, things here are getting “curiouser and curiouser.”

Moving on …  People often try to define “the legacy” left behind by an athlete or a coach when in fact very few of them left behind anything of durable substance.  Curt Flood left a legacy; James Naismith left a legacy.  Setting major records that appear to be out of reach today is not really a legacy; so, we can marvel at Nolan Ryan’s 5,714 strikeouts and/or Wilt Chamberlain averaging 50+ points per game for an entire season; but those are not legacies; they are records.

Now, if I were in the business of cobbling together putative legacies that could be left behind by current athletes, I would probably get tired of searching for bits of wonderment that I could paste onto the subject of the day.  I know that I would soon go to the dark side and put together an unflattering array of happenstances to be left behind by someone.  In fact, I have such a negative “legacy” to present now, and it arose from a simple comment made by a former colleague.  He said that the reason Pete Carroll would not get another head coaching job in the NFL is that teams would be afraid he would demand that they go and acquire Geno Smith to play QB for him.

And that led me to wonder if this might be the “Legacy of Geno Smith” …

• Got his coach fired in Seattle and Seahawks win the Super Bowl the year after that.
• Coach is hired by Las Vegas, and he trades for Smith and gives him a contract extension for 2 years at $75M.
• Las Vegas finishes with the worst record in the NFL and has the overall #1 pick in the Draft.
• Coach is fired again after one year in Las Vegas meaning this starting QB got the same coach fired in two consecutive seasons with two different teams.

I don’t think anyone else can make that claim …

Finally, this from Oscar Levant:

“I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.”

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

 

 

 

Lou Holtz died at the age of 89; he had been in hospice care for a few weeks, and his family announced his passing yesterday.  Lou Holtz had a peripatetic career as a head football coach making stops at William & Mary, NC State, Arkansas, Minnesota, Notre Dame and South Carolina over the course of his career.  He led all six of those teams to bowl games and is the only college football coach to accomplish that.  For a while, he was part of ESPN’s College Football Final which used to be the best overview of the sport.  He signed to be the head coach of the Jets but lasted less than a year; when he resigned, he explained that “God did not put Lou Holtz on this earth to coach in the pros.”

Rest in peace, Lou Holtz.

The sixth iteration of the World Baseball Classic kicks off this week; there are twenty teams in the field representing five of the seven continents on the planet.  There will be games played in Tokyo, San Juan, Houston and Miami involving four pools of five teams each.  The final game will be in Miami on St. Patrick’s Day.  Before you bother to go and look, Ireland is not one of the teams in the field so that sort of serendipity cannot happen.

Teams in each pool will play a double-elimination Round Robin format to determine the top two teams in each pool; after that, everything is single elimination.  Japan has won the World Baseball Classic three times, the Dominican Republic won it once and the US has won it once.  Those three previous winners are in different pools and should be favorites to come out of pool play into the single elimination rounds.  Here is the lineup of the pools:

• Pool A:  Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Panama, Puerto Rico
• Pool B:  Brazil, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, USA
• Pool C:  Australia, Czechia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan
• Pool D:  Dominican Republic, Israel, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Venezuela

All games will be telecast in the US on FOX and/or one of the FOX sub-networks and major-league stars will populate some of the rosters such as:

• Dominican Republic:  Sandy Alcantara, Vladimir Guerero, Jr., Manny Machado, Cristopher Sánchez, Juan Soto and Fernando Tatis, Jr.
• Japan:  Shohei Ohtani, Seiya Suzuki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto
• USA:  Byron Buxton, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge, Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal and Bobby Witt, Jr.

Clearly, there is more than sufficient star-power represented in the tournament to make it an attractive TV offering.  In addition, the World Baseball Classic is a tasty appetizer for baseball which has been absent from the TV menu since Game 7 of the 2025 World Series won by the Dodgers.  The WBC games may not equal the MLB Playoffs or the World Series in terms of drama or gravitas, but they sure beat watching Spring Training games on TV.

Moving on – – but staying with baseball …  Arte Moreno is the owner of the LA Angels.  Since I live in the Washington DC area, I am not familiar with him on a day-to-day basis, but I took note a couple of weeks ago when he was quoted as saying:

“The number one thing fans want is affordability. They want affordability. They want safety and they want a good experience when they come to the ballpark. Believe it or not, winning is not in their top five.”

Say what?  Look, I am not going to take the position that fans would welcome price hikes at the ballpark or having stadiums declared as war zones, but how Mr. Moreno fails to recognize that “good experience when they come to the ballpark” is not intertwined with “winning” needs explanation.

The Angels and the Dodgers play in the same general market.  The Dodgers win a lot more than the Angels do and the Dodgers drew an average home attendance last year that was 17,300 fans more than the Angels did.  Sorry, Mr. Moreno; winning is much more important to fans than you seem to realize.  In fact, that comment makes me wonder if in your mind winning is not “in the top five” of your aspirations for your team; and if I were a fan in the LA area, that would make me less motivated to adopt your team as “my team”.

Let me offer an example here from a different sport and a different region as an analogy.  Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Washington Redskins were winners every year and won 3 Super Bowls over that time span.  Affordability went out the window as season ticket prices soared.  Nevertheless, the stadium was full to overflowing for every home game.  “Winning” kept fans coming and paying attention as “affordability” waned.

Then came the Daniel Snyder Era.  Prices continued to go up much faster than inflation and the team started losing more frequently than winning.  Forget Super Bowl wins, Snyder’s teams were considered to be successful if they made the playoffs every two or three years.  And what happened over time was that season ticket sales plummeted and there were “bare spots” in the stands when the TV cameras gave us a crowd shot.  In essence, “affordability” became an important issue once “winning” was not part of the overall experience.

Finally, I’ll close today with these from Lou Holtz:

 “Don’t tell your problems to people: eighty percent don’t care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.”

And …

 “On this team, we’re all united in a common goal: to keep my job.”

And …

“Coaching is nothing more than eliminating mistakes before you get fired.

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

 

 

We have another situation that fits the adage of bad things happening in threes even though the immediate headline/news event seems out of the ambit of two other embarrassments.  Here is the latest headline:

“Falcons fire LaTroy Lewis amid investigation into sexual assault allegations”

Sadly, those kinds of headlines have become far too commonplace, but this one rang a strange bell in my mind.  Indeed, the Falcons had just hired LaTroy Lewis to be their D-Line coach last month; that seemed to me to be a strange pair of circumstances.  And just a little more reading allowed me to make it the third event in a triumvirate of badness.

The focus of the three phases of embarrassment belongs to the University of Michigan Football Program:

• Embarrassment 1:  The Jim Harbaugh time as head coach produced a suspension for recruiting violations and the infamous sign-stealing scandal.
• Embarrassment 2:  The firing of Harbaugh’s successor, Sherrone Moore, and Moore’s subsequent arrest involving felony charges.
• Embarrassment 3:  LaTroy Hawkins was on Sherrone Moore’s staff as an assistant at Michigan until he was hired by the Falcons in February 2026.

            According to reports, the alleged sexual assault happened in Ann Arbor while Hawkins was still at Michigan and that the police there had just become aware of the incident.  Hawkins’ lawyer naturally stated that his client would “fiercely fight these false allegations” and the lawyer for the woman says that her client was a victim who met Hawkins on an Internet dating site.  There is not much there I find surprising; what I do find surprising is that the Falcons fired Hawkins almost immediately instead of saying they would let the investigation play out and that the Falcons were gathering information on their own and any final decision would await all of that.

Switching gears …  In other news involving NFL folks who got themselves crosswise with the judicial system, President Trump recently pardoned five former players who had been convicted of a variety of offenses.  Here is the list:

1. Billy Cannon:  He plead guilty to being part of a counterfeiting ring that produced large amounts of bogus currency.
2. Travis Henry:  He was convicted on drug trafficking charges.
3. Joe Klecko:  He was convicted of insurance fraud and bankruptcy fraud.
4. Jamal Lewis:  He was convicted of “facilitating a drug deal”.
5. Nate Newton:  He was convicted of drug trafficking after being arrested twice in a short span of time with almost 400 pounds of marijuana in his car.

Billy Cannon was an interesting case.  After his conviction he spent several years in jail but after he was released, he became a dentist/orthodontist and had a practice in Baton Rouge, LA where he had been a star halfback at LSU.  Billy Cannon died in 2018.

Moving on …  Chris Berman announced that he will retire when his contract at ESPN expires at the end of the 2029 NFL season.  Berman started at ESPN in 1979 – – the year ESPN first went on the air; he will have been a 50-year veteran of the network when he retires, and I believe he is the last of the “ESPN originals”.  Chris Berman is famous for his schtick of using wordplay to give nicknames to various athletes.  Everyone probably has his/her favorites on that list but here are my two favorites:

• Oddibe – Young Again – McDowell
• Jim – Two Silhouettes On – DeShaies.

In other news …  The Indy Colts have put the “Transition Tag” on QB Daniel Jones and have given Anthony Richardson permission to seek a trade.  Richardson is only 24 years old and back in 2023 – – not so long ago – – the Colts spent the overall #4 pick in the NFL Draft to acquire Richardson.  In my opinion, the Colts have decided to cut bait here:

• In three seasons with the Colts, Richardson has appeared in only 17 regular season games out of a possible 51 regular season games.
• His completion percentage in those games was only 50.6% which is notoriously low.
• He threw 11 TDs and 13 INTs in those games.

The enticement for other teams is that Richardson is freakishly athletic; if he could stay healthy and work on his accuracy, he could be a foundation piece for a team – – and he is only 24 years old.

Finally, this life assessment from Tallulah Bankhead:

“If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”

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

 

 

Half of yesterday’s rant dealt with the CBA negotiations between the WNBA and the WNBPA.  Several hours after the rant was posted, there were reports of a new proposal from the league regarding revenue sharing and statements from both sides that they were actively engaged in ongoing negotiations.  Other than misanthropes who purposely want to see the league fail and fade into oblivion, that must be positive news.  And so, using the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc – – (Google is your friend) – – I will suggest today the outline of a plan for the NFL and the NFLPA that is a win-win-win- win for consideration if either side opts out of the current CBA.

1. Owners win:  The regular season expands to 18 games; Exhibition Games reduced to two; revenue increases; every team gets nine home games every season.
2. Players win:  Each team gets two BYE Weeks during the regular season; active rosters expand to 55 players; salary cap goes up.
3. Networks win:   NFL games are programming successes; expanded regular season means 16 more “large audience” events for them.
4. Fans win:  Regular season games are more interesting than Exhibition Games; scheduling changes give fans what many have clamored for.

            And that brings me to the schedule.  To accommodate an added regular season game plus an added BYE Week for each team, the current calendar for the NFL season must change and that can be done in a plus way for fans.

• The NFL season has kicked off on Thursday after Labor Day in recent times.  In my expanded regular season, that start date needs to be pushed back one week so that it would have regular season games on Labor Day Weekend.  Starting the season on a Thursday night featuring the reigning Super Bowl champion would still be a scheduling option for the league; it would just happen seven nights earlier on the calendar.
• The league seems to love the idea of a two-week break between the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl, and it allows them to continue “Pro Bowl Nonsense”.  So, to avoid any handwringing about the loss of that “hallowed tradition”, I will leave the extra Super Bowl hype-week in place.
• The second added week to the NFL season will come by pushing the Super Bowl back one week.  The NFL scheduling algorithm for the Super Bowl is about as simple as possible:
  • • The Super Bowl happens on the second Sunday of February.
• I suggest moving it back to the third Sunday of February and that gives lots of NFL fans an additional “win”.

Every year, there is a vocal minority of fans who lament that the day after the Super Bowl is a workday – – or a school day.  Since many fans enjoy adult beverages and party on after the game, the Monday after the Super Bowl can be “challenging” and those fans annually suggest one of two remedies:

1. Play the Super Bowl on the second Saturday of February leaving the second Sunday as a day of recuperation – – OR – –
2. Petition the Congress to make the Monday after the Super Bowl another Federal holiday.

Well, in my expanded regular season, the Super Bowl would be contested on the third Sunday in February.  And in what would seem to be pure serendipity, the third Monday in February is already a Federal holiday defined by Federal law; it is called President’s Day.

So, there are winning points for all the segments of the NFL’s universe – – owners, players, networks and fans.  As Yul Brynner said in the character of the Pharaoh in the move The Ten Commandments:

“So let it be written, so let it be done.”

Finally, this from humorist Franklin P. Jones:

“One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody’s listening.”

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

 

 

Two US sports appear to be headed for “Labor Hell”.  Major League Baseball has a CBA that expires proximally to the end of this year’s World Series and if the reporting on the positions for the two sides is accurate, a lockout or a strike seems likely.  Since lockouts and strikes are weapons of one side but not the other, let me refer here to “work stoppages” as a neutral term that shows support for and heaps blame upon both sides at the same time.

The owners and the players will assert – loudly to be sure – that they do not want a work stoppage, but it is the intransigence of the other guys that has brought the blight upon us.  Deal with that rhetoric when it comes as you will; here is truth:

• Much as the players and the owners protest that they do not want a work stoppage, fans and networks want one even less.
• Fans lose something that they enjoy – – even love; that is why they are fans; that is why they spend discretionary income on “baseball stuff”; they are the economic engine of the sport itself.
• Networks lose something tangible – – the ability to fill a lot of airtime with programming that is attractive to a reliable audience.

We are about 9 months away from the expiration date for the MLB/MLBPA Collective Bargaining Agreement.  Already the major battle line is clear:

• Owners want a salary cap – – and some also want a salary floor.
• Players want a salary cap like most folks want abdominal surgery.

That is the conundrum that needs to be resolved in the next nine months to avoid a work stoppage.  Rhetoric won’t do it; serious negotiation will.

Here is a key element that needs to be on the back burner as the negotiations proceed:

• Baseball is entertainment.  Lack of baseball is not entertainment.  Entertainment is something people seek.  Players and owners should have a joint interest in continuing to provide entertainment to people lest they seek and find entertainment elsewhere.

I am on record saying that a salary cap and a salary floor will be a benefit to baseball because it will create more competitive balance.  Notice, I did not say that I like a “cap-and-floor” because I think the owners are right or that the players are wrong; I think it will improve and enhance baseball; and in my mind that is an unalloyed “good thing”.

The other American sport that is on the precipice of a work stoppage is the WNBA.  Those folks find themselves in an unusual situation; this is their offseason and there will be two new expansion teams in the league if/when it starts up, but there is no CBA and the two sides are still “far apart”.  About a week ago, the league told the players that there is a deadline coming up soon and if there is no resolution by that deadline there will need to be changes to the 2026 season.  I have no idea how rigid such a deadline is – – if it is reality in the first place; nonetheless, it is out there.  That deadline is March 10^th or eight days from today.

Tentatively, the WNBA season is scheduled to start on May 8^th and between now and then, here is a short list of the things that need to be done:

1. Negotiations produce a CBA
2. Players and owners ratify the CBA
3. There needs to be a free agency period for players without a contract
4. There needs to be an expansion team draft
5. There needs to be a league wide draft for college players moving up
6. There needs to be Training Camp time

When I look at that list of things that need to happen by May 8^th for the WNBA season to start on time, the “deadline” of March 10^th for negotiations to conclude starts to make a bit of sense.   I seriously hope that the WNBA players do not overplay their hand here; women’s pro basketball has started to “catch on” in the US; it is still a minor sport to be sure, but it is growing; it is not stagnant.  However, like baseball, the WNBA is entertainment and the risk for the WNBA to lose “entertainment seekers” is greater than for baseball which has been part of the sports cosmos in the US for more than 125 years.

Over the weekend, CBSSports.com had a report on the status of the negotiations; here is a link to that report.  Indeed, money is the core issue here but there are ancillary issues in this negotiation that are probably not present in the baseball talks.

Finally, an observation by Teddy Roosevelt that might pertain if either of these situations turns into a work stoppage:

“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.”

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

 

 

When the Washington Post announced that it was firing most of the people who manned the Sports Desk about a month ago, I pointed out here that another Washington paper had done the same thing in the past and had to go back on that decision.  So far, there has not been any indication that the Post might be regretting its decision.  Nevertheless, I wonder if the full effect of the demise of the Sports Section has been felt to date.

The Post continues to have a Sports Section, and it is usually 4 or 5 pages long.  However, one page is usually devoted to agate type showing standings and scores from the day before and various transactions; it is a part of the paper that probably gets a glance from most readers and little more.  On the other pages, at least 40% and sometimes 50% of the space is consumed by a picture or two related to the story that is printed.

Stories are mostly of Associated Press origin; they are reportorial and accurate; they are also not exciting.  Imagine someone existing on a diet of peanut butter sandwiches seven days a week; it might not be a shock to learn after a month or so that the consumer craves a meal of Mexican food or perhaps some spaghetti and meatballs.  This may turn out to be the case for the Post’s readers down the line, but the timing for such a “break-out” may not have arrived.

Washington sports fans are notoriously bandwagon riders.  When teams are good, they are embraced and even adored by fans and by other locals who normally could not care less about sports or that team.  When the Skins were winning Super Bowls back in the 80s and 90s, there were people following the team who did not know a first down from goose down.  And when the teams are bad, no one really cares.

Right now, sports in the DC area are in a trough – – to use a wave metaphor.

• The Wizards are overmatched even when they are not tanking on purpose
• The Capitals are mediocre – – good enough to sneak into the playoffs down the line but currently with the 9^th best record in the Eastern Conference.
• The Nats were awful last year and project to be merely bad this year.
• DC United finished dead last in the Eastern Conference of MLS last year.

In this area, all those those teams are marginal players in terms of fan involvement.  The Washington Spirit finished second in the women’s soccer league last year and still drew only about 15,000 fans per game and attracted TV audiences comparable to half-hour infomercials featuring Phil Swift.  The big swinger in sports in the DC area is the Washington Commanders.

The NFL is never out-of-the-news but even the NFL has periods of quietude, and this is one of them.  So, I wonder if the Commanders’ fans have yet realized that the only stuff they are going to read in the Post is the journalistic equivalent of “peanut butter sandwiches”.  Perhaps that realization sometime around the NFL Draft or the opening of Training Camp will make current readers realize there is “something missing” which might turn them into former readers.

I have been a Post subscriber for more than 50 years.  Like former Chief Justice, Earl Warren, I too turned to the Sports Section first in the morning; then I looked elsewhere.  I miss the focused coverage in what was the Sports Section and the highly talented columnists who wrote there, but I also read much of the other content in the Post every day.  I will continue to be a subscriber unless the coverage of national, international and business news deteriorates from its current standards.  Having said that, I recognize that what is now the Post Sports Section is a poor relative as compared to a month ago.

Moving on …  The UFL will start its regular season one month from today and it will incorporate some new rules that bear watching because they might find their way into the NFL someday.  Consider:

• A pass completion only requires the receiver to have one foot inbounds not both.  [Not sure if this is good or bad; we’ll see.]
• Field goals from 60 yards or longer are worth 4 points.  [Brandon Aubrey’s NFL contract demands just went up.]
• The “Tush Push” is illegal.  [Not sure how that is illegal if blockers are allowed to assist running backs; we’ll see.]
• No punts allowed inside the 50 yardline.  [Not sure I like this; too much emphasis on long field goal tries already; we’ll see.]
  • • However, such punting is allowed in the final two minutes of each half.
• Kickoffs will be from the 30-yardline.  [Given the UFL kickoff alignment, I don’t see this as a big deal.]
• PATs will come in three flavors.  Kick for 1 point, play from the 2-yardline for 2 points; play from the 8-yardline for 3 points.  [Meh!]
• If the defense returns a failed PAT for a score, the defense will earn the value of the PAT that was tried.  [It is now possible for a UFL team to score a total of 1 point in a game; hoo-ray for that.]

Finally, this from George Bernard Shaw:

“If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.”

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