Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks have reached an accord that will keep Wilson in Seattle for another 4 years. The contract extension is for 4 years and $140M with a $65M signing bonus plus $107M of the contract guaranteed. At $35M per year, Wilson is – for the moment – the highest paid player in NFL history. Reports said that Wilson’s preference was to remain in Seattle; this contract lets him do that and it also secures his financial future for life and probably for the lives of his grandchildren.
Andrew Brandt has an excellent review of the negotiations that led to this contract at Si.com. By his analysis, the Seahawks also achieved some significant objectives in reaching this deal. Brandt was also a Vice President of the Green Bay Packers back when Aaron Rodgers was a rookie and this column also reveals what he saw in the relationship between McCarthy and Rodgers from the beginning. It is an excellent column; I commend it to your reading.
To the surprise of just about no one, a Kenyan runner won the Boston Marathon earlier this week in the time of 2;07:57. Lawrence Cherono won the race by a mere 2 seconds over Lelisa Desisa, an Ethiopian racer. Another Kenyan, Kenneth Kipkemoi finished third only 8 seconds behind Desisa. This is the equivalent of a photo finish in a marathon.
The women’s marathon was also won by a Kenyan, Worknesh Degefa, in 2:23:31. The women’s division was not nearly as closely contested as the men’s division; the second-place finisher crossed the finish line 42 seconds after Degefa broke the tape. At the other end of the race, a 46-year old woman who was running her first marathon finished the race in something over 9 hours. As she said after the race, the time doesn’t matter because what does matter to her is that she finished the race.
Speaking of Boston… It has been more than 2 months since police and prosecutors announced that Robert Kraft was charged with solicitation of prostitution in Florida. At the time of the announcement, the authorities said that his actions were discovered as part of an investigation into sex trafficking that was allegedly ongoing at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida. According to reports, the authorities obtained their reported video surveillance of Kraft and his sex acts in part by telling a judge that sex trafficking was happening inside that facility. My overall position on the charges here remains unchanged:
- Prostitution and solicitation of prostitution are not major crimes in my mind.
- Sex trafficking is indeed a very major crime.
And that overview leads me to ask two questions here:
- Where are the charges/indictments for sex trafficking that were the supposed focus of the investigation there?
- How long after making a big publicity splash by announcing the charges against a public figure such as Robert Kraft does it take to file the major charges?
According to a Washington Post report a couple of weeks ago, the investigation was not limited to the Orchids of Asia Day Spa; Another facility – the East Spa – in Vero Beach, FL was under investigation and the prosecutors there have indeed filed sex trafficking charges against the person who “ran the day-to-day operations of that facility.” However, there has been no such action by the prosecutors in the Jupiter jurisdiction. In fact, Bruce Colton, the State Attorney for the district that includes Jupiter was quoted in the Washington Post report saying:
“I believe human trafficking is heavily involved in what’s going on at all these spas. But believing it and being able to prove it in court are two different things. We feel certain human trafficking is deeply involved in these spas. We’re continuing our investigation to determine whether to file human trafficking charges.”
That sounds a whole lot less definitive that the statements made by the local police at the time they announced the charges against Kraft. Obviously, I have no way to know this for sure, but I am pretty confident that when the authorities went to the judge asking for a warrant to plant those surveillance cameras, they made their representations to that judge just a bit more positively than is conveyed here. Maybe my “cynicism DNA” is over-expressing itself this morning, but I am beginning to wonder if all the declarative statements made by the police and the prosecutors back in February are as founded in reality as they seemed then…
Finally, Dwight Perry had this comment in the Seattle Times recently – – and it sent me to Google to find out if this was real or not:
“Just when you thought there wasn’t room for one more sport, along comes the Lingerie Fighting Championships.
“So, what brand are the boxing trunks — Everlast or Victoria’s Secret?”
Indeed, the boxing trunks are far more closely related to Victoria’s Secret than they are to Everlast. A brief visit to https://lingeriefc.com/news/ will confirm that the sport is for real and that there are more than 50 women who are competing/have competed in lingerie fighting events. Moreover, the organization announced that it will stage 6 shows in Las Vegas this year at a facility called The NERD. [I am not familiar with this venue despite our annual visits to Las Vegas.] The first of those events happened on 4 April; the rest of them will take place between now and Halloween 2019.
But don’t’ get me wrong, I love sports………