Month: July 2020

For the last three or four days, there has been a “ripple in The Force” around the DC area.  Mysterious Tweets kept showing up saying that a big story was about to break and that it was going to land on the Washington NFL Team Currently-Without-A-Name.  It was supposed to break on Tuesday; then it was Thursday; well, it hit the Internet last night and it is on the front page directly under the masthead in this morning’s Washington Post.  The jump for the article is also in the front section; there is no mention of this story or anything related to this story in today’s 3-page Sports Section.

Here is the link to the story.  It is long and it is sleazy – but it is not nearly as bad as I had conjured up in my mind as the time between its supposed release and its eventual release stretched to more than a day.  Here is the summary:

• Fifteen women accuse a handful of executives in the team’s “business side” of sexual harassment and creating a toxic work culture that goes back at least to 2006.
• Two female reporters who covered the team also allege that they were subject to improper advances and touching
• Two of those men were fired last week; a third announced his resignation from the team yesterday afternoon.
• Allegations of improper touching, propositioning and peering up women’s dresses through plexiglass stair steps populate the story.

Just so you know, this is pretty mild stuff when compared to what my mind had conjured up for the rumored “blockbuster story”.  Here are the two most outrageous scenarios I had concocted in my mind.  Please note, the key words there are “concocted in my mind” …

1. Somehow and in some way this would be a lurid tale of sex for sale wherein Jeffrey Epstein was a “service provider” and that somehow someone in the team hierarchy had been involved in the elusive activities of Ghislaine Maxwell over the past several months.  Not even close!
2. A US Attorney somewhere had been investigating and would soon announce an indictment of Danny Boy and/or Bruce Allen for some sort of Madoff-like Ponzi Scheme.  Not even close!

For the record:

• No one alleges improper conduct by either Danny Boy or Bruce Allen.  Some of the accusers allege that they “set the tone” for the organization but that neither did anything as specifically wrong as any of the charges here.
• Only one of the fifteen accusers is identified; the other fourteen spoke on the condition of anonymity because they say that they are subject to non-disclosure agreements.
• A couple of years ago, the team’s cheerleaders accused some of the “business people” of bringing some of the expensive suite holders to a photo shoot where – allegedly – some of the suite holders had the opportunity to see the cheerleaders topless.  These allegations say that there was always pressure to “appeal to” these folks who bought the expensive stadium suites.  There is no overlap – – but there is parallelism.

[Aside:  As the team continues to search for a new name and a new identity, I think we can now assume that two possible names are “off the table”.  Considering this report – and what will surely be follow-up reporting – I think you can kiss goodbye the names Washington Red Tails and Washington Predators.  Then again, I have no expertise in marketing/branding.]

Putting pieces together after the fact, some of the unusual happenings of the past week now make some sense.  Last week, the team announced that it had fired its director of pro personnel and its assistant director of pro personnel.  Given that training camp was about to start, it seemed like a strange time to do that.  However, the team announced the hiring of a guy for the top job there who had formerly been with the Carolina Panthers and so I just figured that this guy was someone who had earned coach Ron Rivera’s trust and that this was a way to get another “Rivera-guy” into a key position.  While that last motivation may still be true, I think this report provides the real reason for the strange timing of those firings.

The announcement yesterday afternoon of the resignation of Larry Michael – “The Voice of the Skins” on radio and TV – was more than unusual.  For about 15 years, Michael has been the ultimate homer and a team apologist to the point of sycophancy.  He often came across like the kid in 7^th grade who always asked the teacher what he could do for extra credit on any assignment.  When he resigned with no fanfare and with no acknowledgement or appreciation from anyone in team management, that scored a “10” on the “Bizarro-Meter”.

Fans have already expressed hope that all this sleaze will make the NFL force Danny Boy to sell the team.  I believe that is wishful thinking given what we know so far; no one alleges that Danny Boy did any of the harassing/touching.  Just as it took major economic pressure from big-money interests to force Danny Boy to change the team name, it would take even bigger economic pressure from even more big-money interests to pressure the NFL as a league to rid itself of Danny Boy as an owner.  Hey, in 2020 we have seen that just about anything is possible – – but I still think this is wishful thinking on the part of disheartened fans in the DC area.

Here is something to bolster my point that Danny Boy will not be forced to relinquish the team:

• The team has hired the outside law firm of Wilkinson Walsh to “conduct a thorough independent review of this entire matter and help the team set new employee standards for the future.”  That is pretty standard stuff – – but the NFL already announced that it will rely on the findings of Wilkinson Walsh to determine what – if anything – the league should do about any of this.
• It is the team – and by extension, Danny Boy – that has hired Beth Wilkinson for this independent review.  The team and Danny Boy are her clients; the chances that she will come up with anything that puts the team’s future under Danny Boy in jeopardy are minuscule.

Memo to DC Area Fans:  The team is not changing hands based on anything revealed here – and it will take a lot more to kick that snowball over the cliff.  It will take more than another shoe to drop; it will take another dozen or so shoes to drop.

There is an interesting irony here that fans will glom onto because it denigrates Bruce Allen who was fired as team president and GM at the end of last season.  At the end of his tenure here, no one would have confused him with a “fan favorite”.  Two of Bruce Allen’s pronouncements about the team particularly grated on fans.  He once said – after yet another losing season – that the team was “winning off the field”.  Fans did not take kindly to that.  In another time at the podium, he said that the team culture was “damned good”.  Well, the allegations in this report go back to 2006 and Allen was around from 2010-2019.  Is that what “winning off the field” looks like?  The team culture does not sound “damned good” to me and it will not to a lot of callers to DC Sports Radio shows today and tomorrow…

There will be more reporting on this story so let me take stock of the story at this point in time.  There are strong points and there are weak points; there are lots of speculations still out there.

• Please note that in what sounds like an environment populated with testosterone-driven sub-humans, there are no allegations that any players were involved in any of these incidents.  The alleged perpetrators – people no longer with the team – were nominally professional executives.
• Those who are pre-disposed to dislike this report can and will point to the fact that there is only one named source and that a lot of this is based on anonymous/unnamed sources.  That is true; it is also true that the team took action against two of its executives prior to the publication of the story indicating to me that the team has some inkling of “improprieties” even before the outside counsel delivers its report.
• I hate to hear about situations where facts germane to the situation are restricted by non-disclosure agreements.  Those instruments not only get in the way of resolving disputes, but they also create an aura of suspicion about the motivations of all the parties to those agreements.  Why does one party want to keep things quiet?  What did the other party get in return for agreeing to keep things quiet?  Non-disclosure agreements make sense to protect the revelation of trade secrets and/or properly classified information; none of that sort of information appears pertinent here.

Obviously, the findings of the outside counsel will be an important element in the future of this story.  However, as I said above, do not expect any bombshells in there and be prepared for some cosmetic organization chart revisions for the team front office.  There may be another “Casanova wannabe” or two uncovered in the organization who will be terminated but they are not likely to be anyone sitting at a mahogany desk.  I will not be surprised to learn from the outside counsel that the folks already fired/separated were indeed as bad as alleged by the accusers – and maybe even worse.  But that is about as far as this one is likely to go.

So, until we know for sure what the outside counsel comes up with, this story has an unsatisfactory element to it.  As it stands now, it is sort of like the time when Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vaults.  There was great anticipation; people were going to learn something that could be really salacious; and it turned out to be as exciting as shredded wheat.

Stay tuned … but be sure you have something to occupy your time as this saga grinds to its conclusion.  It should take a while and it probably will not be overly dramatic at the end.

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

 

 

Just so there is no misunderstanding:

• I really hope that football – – college and professional – – can happen in the Fall of 2020.

That is what I want to happen; that is what would happen if I ran across a magic lamp and the genie inside gave me one sports wish that it would grant.  Unfortunately, I think the chances of my wish coming true are diminishing week by week.

Maybe – just maybe – the NFL can throw enough money and people resources at the testing/tracing/PPE issues to put on a season.  After all, that is a business entity that rakes in $15B per year and none of the owners of the franchises could be fairly described as “strapped for resources”.  I would like to hold on to that possibility as “a good thought” for today – – because there are not a lot of other good thoughts floating through my mind.

I have said before that college football is in much more danger than the NFL simply because the costs involved in keeping a football team healthy enough to perform are significant and colleges do not have the kinds of fiscal resources that the NFL has.  The more I think about it, the less sanguine I become about seeing college football in 2020.

In its attempt to restart its season, the NBA – – and the WNBA – – have resorted to a “Bubble Strategy” wherein players and coaches are isolated from the outside world and medical testing is done repeatedly and frequently.  The NBA can afford to do that because it has deep pockets and because NBA rosters are small.

College football teams have about 100 players and when you add in the coaches and the trainers and the rest of the staff, there are probably 150 people who would need to be “Bubbled Up”.  That represents an expense level that is not acceptable and so the college football team will need to join with the rest of the university community by living in dorms and going to classes which is the antithesis of being in a bubble.  And for those schools that will go “totally online” for the Fall Semester, what sort of optic does it provide if students are not allowed back on campus, but the football team is?

Moreover, the closer we get to what would be a “typical” college football season, the more I begin to think that there is no good reason to do such a thing.  As I said above, the NFL is a $15B per year – or more – business enterprise and the players collectively earn something in the neighborhood of $7B a year.  Even before COVID-19 did the species jump to infect humans, NFL players risked their bodies and their long-term health to collect the salaries offered to them.  One could argue about the rationality of such decisions by the players, but enough of them decided to take those risks to allow the NFL to put on its show year after year.

So, in a sense, COVID-19 is an “added-layer of risk” for an NFL player in 2020.  In addition to all the potential orthopedic health hazards and the potential for CTE or other brain dysfunctions down the road, the NFL player in 2020 must factor in the contagion called COVID-19 into his “health versus salary calculus”.  However, college football players have no such calculus to perform for a single obvious reason:

• College football players do not get paid to play football.

College players only have their scholarships – plus room and board and Pell Grants – to balance against their health risks which includes COVID-19 in 2020.  And if we look objectively at all the scholarship football players in the US, what percentage of those players seriously value those scholarships as educational assets?  If I set a prop bet at 50% of the players, would you take OVER or UNDER?

Irrational Me wants college football for hedonistic reasons; I really enjoy watching and following college football.  Rational Me recognizes that college players are taking on added risk by playing this year for no added benefit – and that makes exactly no sense.

Rational Me thinks this is going to be an unsatisfactory Fall in 2020…

And just for the record, I do not find any soothing qualities in any of the pronouncements that there might be college football in the Spring of 2021.  If such a thing were to happen, it would be discordant – – sort of like a 60-game MLB season is going to be discordant.  College football belongs in the Fall not in the Spring.  Having said that, college football does not belong in the Fall at the expense of added risk to the health of the college football players.

Focusing on reality here, even if some schools find ways to play some games this Fall, it is not going to be the “same game”.  Michigan will not have 110,000 fans in their stadium for home games; lots of games will happen with no one in the stands; the TV networks will add recorded crowd noise to their telecasts; the product in 2020 – if there is a product – is going to be ersatz at best.

So, maybe the best thing for the college football mavens to do is to give fans the awful dose of castor oil and get it over with.  The taste of the castor oil will go away, and fans will go through the multiple levels of grieving for the loss of college football.  Just call if off…

There was news yesterday that the Rose Parade for Jan 1, 2021 has been canceled.  That decision was not made because there is a shortage of roses; that decision was made because of the potentially disastrous public health repercussions from holding the parade.  So, ask yourself this:

• If the Rose Parade is a public health risk not worth taking, would a Rose Bowl Game played in the same venue make sense?

Finally, Bob Molinaro had this item in his column in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot recently.  There is plenty of blame to be handed out to scientists, medical folks and politicians of all persuasions regarding COVID-19; this comment points the finger at another group that needs some shaming:

“Stand-up guy: Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle, a U.Va. man, stuck out his neck to make a point about America’s issues with COVID-19. ‘Sports,’ he said, ‘are like the reward of a functioning society. If there aren’t sports, it’s going to be because people are not wearing masks. We need help from the general public.’”

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

 

 

Last week when writing about the pressure on the Washington NFL team to change its name, I suggested Washington Gridlock as a possible name to reflect the traffic in and around the city as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of the Congress and the Administration.  Now that the team has embarked on a “process” to get a new name, I will use “Gridlock” as a placeholder name until there is an official one.

It seems that this story is fading on the national scale as well it should, but here in the nation’s capital, it continues to be a big deal for reasons that confound me.  The Washington Post sports section has shrunk to a maximum of 3 pages in the daily editions; sometimes it is only 2 pages long.  Even with that limited real estate on the pages, the Post continues to grind this story into the ground.  This area has 3 sports radio stations – – apocalyptic, I know – – and every time there is a local program on the air, you can bet that at least 2 segments per hour will focus on the new name for the Gridlock.

One of the latest angles on this story goes like this:

• As late as July 1^st, the team had done nothing regarding a name change or a rebranding.
• Early on, Coach Ron Rivera said that the team would consult with Native Americans about a new name as part of “the process”.
• [Aside:  I know that Ron Rivera is part of Danny Boy’s inner circle today, but he is there to coach a football team and not to pick a brand for the damned team.  Or is that just me …?]
• Now there are “reports” that the team wants to be rebranded by the start of the NFL season but that the league wants all of this done by the start of Training Camp if possible.  [Training Camp opens in 13 days…]
• The sense you get from these inside reports is like the final few moments of a Benny Hill sketch.

I have exactly no experience with marketing and branding; I tend think many of the actions and pronouncements made in the name of “branding” to be over-wrought.  However, I have the feeling that the Washington Gridlock needs to get their rebranding right even if it is not gotten quickly.  In the world of development and engineering, there is a statement of warning that folks need to remember when something goes wrong and needs fixing to maintain a schedule.  Here is that warning:

• If there is time to do this over, there is time to do this right.

Get it right, Gridlock…!

I have heard some sports commentators suggest that Patrick Mahomes’ deal with the Chiefs (10-years for $500M with about $150M guaranteed) provides a template for the negotiations between the Cowboys and Dak Prescott.  I have thought about this for a couple of days now and I do not understand where those commentators are headed with this.

Dak Prescott is a franchise QB in the NFL; only the most virulent “Cowboy-hater” would deny that.  He has signed his franchise tag contract for this season meaning that in the absence of a long-term deal, he will make $31.4M this year guaranteed.  This will be his 5^th year in the NFL and in his first 4 seasons, he earned approximately $4M.  So, please do not shed tears for Dak Prescott and liken his situation to slavery; he is making a ton of money this year and could easily be an unrestricted free agent next year.  [I believe that he will have to make a minimum of $37.7M next year if the Cowboys use the franchise tag again.]

Having said all the above, I still do not understand the idea that the “Mahomes Deal” is a template for a “Prescott Deal” down the road.  Dak Prescott is not Patrick Mahomes in terms of stats or in terms of accomplishments; that is not to diminish Prescott’s accomplishments; it is simple an acknowledgement of reality.

According to reports, the Cowboys offer to Prescott is 5 years for $175M with $105M guaranteed.  Let me take those numbers as Gospel because I have no inside information to offer up here.  In addition, according to reports, the “sticking point” in the negotiations is the length of the contract; the Cowboys want 5 years and Prescott wants 4 years.  Again, I will take that information at face value.  So, if these are the conditions on the table in the Cowboys/Prescott contract talks, I do not see how commentators can say that the “Mahomes Deal” offers a template.

• Mahomes signed for 10 years.  The Cowboys and Prescott are squabbling over a fifth year.  Neither side seemingly wants anything that goes on for so long.

Here is the only way I can look at the “Mahomes Deal” and say that it offers anything that might guide the Cowboys/Prescott negotiations:

• If you take the Cowboys’ offer and scale it up to 10 years in length, it will have a salary total of $350M with about $210M guaranteed.
• Those numbers – compared to “Mahomes’ numbers” – tell me that Prescott might be ever so slightly underpaid over the course of these imagined 10 years but that his guaranteed money would be far too much.

Finally, Dwight Perry had this observation about another set of NFL contract extension negotiations in the Seattle Times recently:

“The Browns are talking contract extension with defensive end Myles Garrett.

“Team negotiators are hereby advised to keep their chin straps fastened.”

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

 

 

I turned to Google yesterday just out of curiosity; I knew that Jason Whitlock and FOX Sports had parted company; but until yesterday, I did not know what Whitlock was doing with his life and his communication skills.  Google let me quickly learn that he signed on with Outkick.com which is the re-branded name for what started as Outkickthecoverage.com; that is the platform where you can find Clay Travis’ writings also.

I can take or leave Travis’ essays; I like Whitlock’s writings a lot.  Let me be clear; I like Whitlock’s writing not because I agree with him; in fact, I probably disagree with him at least half the time.  What I like is that I always come away from one of his essays thinking about what he said.  Sometimes I come away thinking about how I would frame a counter-argument were I in a discussion with him; other times I come away wishing that I had been able to make his point before reading what he wrote.  Rarely do I come away from a Jason Whitlock piece – written or verbal – and think, “Meh!”

I first discovered Whitlock as a columnist for the Kansas City Star and enjoyed his time at ESPN particularly when he was a fill-in host on Pardon the Interruption; he fit very well with either Kornheiser or Wilbon on that program.  He bounced from ESPN to FOX Sports and back to ESPN and back to FOX again.  In his latest FOX Sports incarnation, he was a co-host on Speak for Yourself first with Colin Cowherd and then with Marcellus Wiley.  For me, the original pairing with Cowherd was excellent; the later partnership with Wiley was good – – but not as good.

Here is a link where you can find his essays at Outkick.com.  Please do not go there expecting to find a compendium of “Dr. Feelgood pieces”; you may well find that you fundamentally disagree with him 40% of the time, but I believe he will make you think about his point of view and your point of view in juxtaposition.

Welcome back, Jason Whitlock…

Last week, the Jacksonville Jaguars announced that they hoped to be able to play home games in front of fans this year albeit with TIAA Bank Stadium limited to 25% capacity.  That announcement is noteworthy because it represents unbridled optimism on three levels:

1. It assumes that there will be and NFL season in 2020.  For the record, I really want that to be the case; but my pragmatist streak says that that not much more than an even-money bet at the moment.
2. It assumes that the State of Florida and the City of Jacksonville will permit outdoor gatherings of a sufficient size to make those home games comply with local ordinances.  The COVID-19 “numbers” in Florida are horrible currently; yes, there is time to get things under control prior to any scheduled Jags’ home game.  However, whatever “phase” Florida and Floridians find themselves in today, it is not a good “phase” AND they have not yet shown that they know how to move toward a safe “phase” reliably.
3. It assumes that 16,750 people – – 25% of TIAA Bank Field’s seating capacity – – will want to come out and see the 2020 version of the Jaguars.

Dwight Perry had this MLS item in the Seattle Times recently:

“Two teams — FC Dallas and Nashville SC — had to pull out of the MLS is Back Tournament after too many players tested positive for coronavirus.

“On second thought, just call it the Well, Most of MLS is Back Tournament.”

Things got worse for MLS after that jab from Professor Perry; Toronto FC and DC United had a game postponed twice because a Toronto player had an inconclusive test and a DC player had a positive test for COVID-19.  The teams finally played yesterday, and the result was a draw.

All did not go well with the return of the National Women’s Soccer League either.  The NWSL planned to be the first US sports league back in business with a 25-game tournament that was to begin on June 25^th. The Orlando team had to withdraw from the tournament even before it had a chance to begin when 6 players and 4 staff members of the team tested positive for COVID-19.

Compare those happenstances with the English Premier League which has returned to the pitch playing out its season with no fans in the stands.  Last week, the EPL reported that it had tested almost 2000 players, employees and staff members and found ZERO positive results.  I am no epidemiologist, but it would seem to me that soccer games and soccer practices ought to be similar on either side of the Atlantic Ocean; so, there needs to be something else at work here to explain the different “soccer experiences” with COVID-19.

My untutored conclusion is found in the stats related to the COVID-19 pandemic:

• The total number of cases reported in the UK from the beginning of March is 290,000 cases.
• Since July 1^st, the number of new cases identified each day has ranged from about 350 to 820 per day.
• The total number of cases reported in the US from the beginning of March is 3,430,000 cases.
• Since July 1^st, the number of new cases identified each day has ranged from about 43,000 to 66,800 per day.
• The population in the US is about 5 times greater than the population in the UK.  It does not take a PhD in mathematics to see that the COVID-19 virus has spread a whole lot more in the US than it has in the UK.  “Community spread” is much greater here in the US; Americans should take no pride in that data.

Finally, here is one more item from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times:

“The Fuji-Q Highland amusement park in Japan, saying that droplets from screaming on roller coasters could spread the coronavirus, is urging riders to ‘Please scream inside your heart.’

“If you think that’s extreme, wait’ll they try to ban booing in Philadelphia.”

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

 

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, here’s Johnny Mathis …  <applause>

“You ask how long I’ll love you, I’ll tell you true

Until the Twelfth of Never, I’ll still be loving you.”

Today must be the Twelfth of Never – even though the Julian calendar says it is the 13^th of July – because today Danny Boy Snyder reneged on his promise to NEVER (in caps as he said it should be) change the name of his Washington football franchise.  Reports this morning say the idea is to retain the team colors and that the new name has not been announced yet because trademark applications need to happen and be approved before a new name can be attached to the team.

You are going to read some pieces in the next several days about the persistence of activists who have been working toward this name change for the last 40 years or so.  Smile when you read them; the writer will have made himself/herself feel good by writing that stuff and the subjects will feel as if it has all been worth the struggle.  But that is not what happened…

• This name change came about because George Floyd died a horrible death in Minneapolis.

That’s it; that’s the reason.  The protests and the social awareness changes that sprang from that event led a large number of big-money interests to take action related to racism in the US and it is the action(s) of those big-money interests that have changed the name of the Washington NFL franchise.  Sorry not to begin this week with a feelgood moment; but that is the reality…

[Aside:  Here in the DC area, I fully expect to read a letter to the editor sometime in the next week saying that the writer has been a Skins fan since they played in Griffith Stadium (the 1950s) and that this name change is like losing a family member.  Preemptively, let me say that I hope you get over this “setback” more quickly than over the loss of a family member.]

Moving on …  Usually, when athletes, coaches or celebrities speak out on social or political issues, my reaction is to hear what they have to say and then to ask for one of two things:

1. The objective data/circumstances that support the position taken by the individual – and/or –
2. The credentials of the individual to be authoritative on the subject.

Over the years, I have been criticized for those sorts of stances as being “too harsh” or “too narrow-minded”.  I plead guilty to “too harsh”; I plead innocent to “too narrow-minded” on the basis that what I want to hear is more information from the declarer here which is the antithesis of being narrow-minded.  Last week, I ran across a demonstration of why these criteria are useful ones – particularly the second one.

Lou Holtz – a generally likeable and affable former football coach – was a guest on a FOX news program called The Ingraham Angle.  I cannot recall ever watching this program so I cannot provide much context for how the following sort of business came into being.  Coach Holtz was strongly in favor of opening up sports and particularly college football; here is a sample of what he had to say:

“The way it is right now, they just don’t want to have sports and there’s no way in this world you can do anything in this world without a risk.  People stormed Normandy … they knew there was going to be casualties, they knew there was going to be risk, but it was a way of life.”

Thomas Jefferson found a few things to be “self-evident”.  I would hope that in 2020, it would be equally self-evident that the situations that required the storming of the beaches at Normandy on D-Day were fundamentally different from the situations we face today regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.  I will point out only one fundamental difference here:

• By taking the risk of invading at Normandy, the men who fought and died there did so to kill off and remove permanently the world threat of Nazism and Adolf Hitler and his cronies.
• By taking the risk of throwing tens of thousands of people into close proximity to play and watch sporting events, the people involved will NOT kill off the coronavirus.  What they will do with those actions is to make a lot more people sick.

As I said above, Lou Holtz is a nice and affable man.  However, I am now fully convinced that I will never go to him for any information related in any way to public health policy and practices.

And speaking obliquely about college football in the Fall of 2020, several of the big-time conferences have announced that they will only play against conference opponents this year.  The thinking behind this is that teams will play against other teams that are adhering to a common set of health and safety standards [theoretically] and such a schedule will minimize travel burdens for the teams [Be sure to ignore the 1200 mile trip from Nebraska to Rutgers and/or the 1250 mile trip from Boston College to Miami].

But there is another element of illogic at work here.  If you believe that any/all of the Power-5 Conferences that hope to play football in the Fall will have efficient and effective measures in place to minimize the spread of the coronavirus, then interconference games between Power-5 teams ought to be OK.  And in fact, there are more than a few “traditional rivalry games” that are interconference games that involve minimal travel:

• Clemson and the University of South Carolina are about 100 miles apart.
• Florida and Florida State are about 125 miles apart.
• Notre Dame and Michigan are about 125 miles apart.
• Pitt and West Virginia are about 50 miles apart.

If the various conferences can stage games “safely” among their member schools, why would those traditional games be any more dangerous?

I’ll hang up and listen for the answer…

Finally, sticking with the ideas of “football” and “things that are self-evident”, here is an observation by Bob Molinaro in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot a couple of weeks ago:

“You don’t say: Johnny Manziel recently acknowledged that his football career is ‘in the past.’ This is not what we in the newspaper business would call a scoop.”

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

 

 

There is this thing called credibility.  And there is this other thing called competence.  You can concoct circumstances wherein someone or something is competent but still not credible.  It is far less likely that a lack of competence would yield an aura of credibility.  And this morning we have an example of that last situation.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

• Major League Baseball.

Spring Training shut down on March 12, 2020 because of COVID-19.  Given that MLB always had the intention of re-constituting its teams for a delayed start to the 2020 season, it is fair and reasonable to suggest that they had 110 days between March 12 and July 1 to avoid the utter incompetence that was on display as of yesterday.  Lots of MLB players were born and raised in the Dominican Republic; given the lack of a baseball season, it is not mind-bending to realize that some of them went back to the D.R. to await whatever restart was going to happen.

MLB and the MLBPA frittered away most of those 110 days fighting over money; forget heaping blame on either side for that nonsense; that is what management and unions do.  However, do not forgive MLB in particular – and the union to a lesser extent – for allowing the following act of amateurish ineptitude to happen:

• Two chartered aircraft took MLB Dominican players to Miami on 1 July so that they could then join their teams to get busy with Spring Training 2.0.  [No problem here…]
• The players and the MLB staff members who were on those flights were not tested for COVID-19 before boarding the aircraft according to a report in this morning’s Washington Post.  [Are you kidding me?]
• “Multiple players” on those flights have subsequently tested positive.  [Surprise!]

Asked to explain this exacta of stupidity and incompetence leading to a total lack of credibility, here is what an MLB spokesperson had to say after noting that tests are less available in the Dominican Republic than they are in the US and that:

“… shipping saliva samples from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. was not possible due to governmental restrictions.”

MLB had 110 days to figure out minor obstacles such as:

• Availability of tests in a country whose health system and resources are not considered “gold standard”.
• How to mitigate that problem either by bringing your own tests or quarantining the players for a time before putting them on the aircraft untested.

Here is the link to the report in this morning’s Washington Post.  The author is ever so polite there by saying that this goat rodeo merely lends “more skepticism to baseball’s restart plan.”  I should say so…

The distance from Santo Domingo in the D.R to Miami is 828 miles; an aircraft can make that flight in about 90 minutes.  Add in time to load the plane, taxi to the runway, taxi around the airport in Miami and unload the plane and those folks were in a confined space with recirculated air for at least 2 hours and probably 2.5 hours.  Airplanes use HEPA filters for the recirculated air – as well they should.  The problem is that the diameter of the coronavirus is three times smaller than the pore size of the best HEPA filters.  The folks on those flights were in close contact with and breathing the same air with one another for at least 2 hours and no one knew that at least one person got on the plane with the virus in his system.

[Aside:  This is precisely why I am not about to get on an airplane to take a trip anywhere in the foreseeable future.  For the record, we have already canceled our annual autumnal pilgrimage to Las Vegas.  We did that prior to the breaking of this news; I am not about to put my health status in the hands of a couple hundred other people whose fastidiousness I have no way to measure.]

For baseball – and baseball fans – this should evoke a double face-palm simply because humans only have two arms and hands.  Supposedly, MLB has a health and protocol in place that is more than a hundred pages in length – – and it did not have a way to prevent this kind of abject stupidity to occur?  This is not about the difficulty of acquiring testing materials in the D.R.; this is about the lack of foresight regarding an obvious disease vector.  No one is going to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine this year because (s)he figured out that traveling on an airplane with an infected individual – or more – might spread the virus among the other passengers.

Since the subject here is baseball and  I have my adrenal glands pumping, let me say that if/when there are MLB games in 2020 there are two rules that will be in effect that I simply do not like:

1. The DH will be in effect for all games.  Let me say this as politely as I can.  If a player is a big fat guy who can hit the ball a mile and do nothing else on a baseball diamond at a skill level greater than a walrus on roller skates, he does not belong in the major leagues.
2. In games that go to extra innings, the team at bat will begin their innings with a runner on second base.  For the stat mavens, he will be there based on an error – – but no error will be charged to anyone.  The stat mavens should have a ball with that one.  [Aside: They should make the big fat guys who are the team DHs be that base runner…]

Finally, staying with today’s baseball theme, here is a comment by Greg Cote in the Miami Herald recently:

“Cubs pitcher Jose Quintana lacerated his thumb while washing dishes. Jose. You make big-league money. Look into this really neat invention. It’s called a dishwasher!”

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

 

 

With all the attention being paid to the NBA’s restart and the delayed opening of the MLB season and the perpetual focus on anything and everything related to the NFL, the situation regarding college football for 2020 has not gotten a lot of attention.  Many Division III schools have canceled their 2020 fall football season; the Ivy League canceled fall sports including football yesterday; major conferences see some teams involved in regulated practices and that those regulated practices are still producing large numbers of confirmed COVID-19 infections; Ohio State has “paused” the “voluntary workouts” for the football team.  These are not good omens.

About a month ago, I was pointed to a report by Bill Rabinowitz in The Columbus Dispatch.  This is a lengthy article that goes over many of the challenges facing college football programs; the headline for the article says it all:

“College football has hurdles to clear in making safe return this fall”

Rabinowitz focuses immediately on the impossibility of any sort of “social distancing” in football; he points out that the only sport with more close contact would be wrestling but in wrestling there are only two participants at a time and the encounter is much shorter than in a football game.  Here is an assessment from the medical director of the Ohio Department of Health quoted in that article:

“You have people lining up at the line of scrimmage and the offense and defense are inches apart.  You have to tackle people. Wearing masks would be difficult.

“And when you look at the respiratory droplet transmission, if you’re out of breath and breathing really hard, you can see that’s going to probably expel more respiratory droplets than others would. If you’re yelling out calls and signals instead of talking, that again is something that can emit some of those.

“So a lot of work would need to be done on this. But we also have a lot of really smart people in Ohio and elsewhere in the country that have a lot of capabilities that can figure things out.”

He forgot to mention “huddles” and “sideline interactions with assistant coaches to adjust strategies” and “the exchanges of viral loads during the flesh piles that happen after tackling”.  Indeed, a lot of work needs to be done – although I do not see a lot of it having been done between the time this article was written in late May and today.  But in addition to the structural issues involved in how the game of football happens on the field and the need for creative means to mitigate some of the more robust viral transmission vectors, there is another issue in play here:

•  All these mitigation strategies and these creative solutions to problems are going to cost money – – and not just three easy payments of $39.95.

One idea here is to create cohorts within the team.  Groups of players would be put together and they would stay together in something like a “group quarantine” to the greatest extent possible.  Sounds like a good idea and one that might be enforceable to a large extent and then come the details:

“That approach would include expanded testing and contact tracing for players, which involves monitoring everyone with whom they have been in close physical vicinity. They also strongly advocated the concept of cohorting as teams begin to return. That involves separating players into small groups that attempt to be as self-contained as possible. That way, if a player becomes infected, the exposure is limited to only his group.”

Expanded testing and contact tracing for as many as 150 people associated with a college football program who have been “out and about” for months is a daunting task.  Imagine interviewing a single player returning to campus and trying to get from him all his contacts and behaviors for the previous two or three weeks.  Then go and try to confirm those recollections to see if any of those contacts tested positive and when.  Just that first level screening could take several days – – and meanwhile, the player must be put into a cohort without knowing of his previous exposure(s).  The only way to speed that up is to have more tracers and that translates into lots more costs.

Oh, and please do not think that the “expanded testing” stops once the cohorts are formed.  That testing will need to happen throughout the season; players need not be tested daily, but they surely would need to be tested more than weekly.

I will not be surprised to hear that lots of schools – maybe even conferences – decide to forego a 2020 college football season and try to figure out how to squeeze one into the early weeks of 2010 simply based on costs.  The big-time programs – – the ones whose boosters can come up with $10-15M on the spot to buy out a coach who loses a few too many games – – may be able to stay afloat fiscally.  Maybe if they play in the fall of 2020, they will need to concoct schedules where the big-time programs fill out a schedule by playing other big-time programs in other conferences?  Another negative development yesterday came from Stanford – a big-time football school.  Stanford announced it will cut 11 non-revenue sports this year for financial reasons.

Here is the link to the article in The Columbus Dispatch to which I have referred here.  It was published on May 24^th and if any of the serious hurdles described there have been resolved to the satisfaction of scientists and medical folks, I do not know what those resolved hurdles might be.

Finally, here is a comment from Scott Ostler in the SF Chronicle:

“The ESPN documentaries on Michael Jordan and Lance Armstrong were interesting. Now how about a documentary or two on people who become superstars without being bullies and jerks? Just to show the kiddies that it can be done that way.”

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

 

 

Fifty-four years ago today, my then-fiancée and I exchanged wedding vows and she became my long-suffering wife.  Happy anniversary …

Yesterday, I wrote about an NBA team that looked to benefit from the season restart in the “Orlando Bubble” and another that seemed to lose out.  Those statements generated an email question from a friend that took off in several directions.  He began with a simple question:

“Which baseball teams do you think benefited from the delayed start of the season and which ones were hurt by the delay?”

I think the team that was hurt the most was the LA Dodgers.  Back in February, the Dodgers traded away 3 young prospects to the Red Sox in exchange for David Price and Mookie Betts.  Price will not participate in the shortened 2020 season and the Dodgers will only have the services of Mookie Betts for a maximum of 60 games before he becomes a free agent.  On top of that major transaction flopping like a dead fish for 2020, the Dodgers stand to lose more revenue than other teams simply because they normally draw the most fans of any franchise in MLB by a sizeable margin year after year.

Two teams that benefited from the delayed start to the 2020 season are:

1. The Houston Astros were the pariahs of MLB – and maybe of all US sports – for their sign stealing escapades back in February as Spring Training began.  COVID-19 and the prolonged spitting match between MLB and the MLBPA has allowed some of the heat associated with that scandal to dissipate.  The Astros will still be the targets of scorn away from home this year, but there will be fewer games and I think the edge has been taken off just a bit.
2. The NY Yankees will benefit simply by the passage of time.  Back in the Spring, they had three good players who were recovering from injuries who would not have been ready had the season begun in March/April.  They were Aaron Hicks, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton.  It appears that all three  are ready to begin the season at the end of July.

The email exchange took a few diversions – involving some attempts at scatological humor – until I mentioned in passing the old saw about the NFL, “On any given Sunday …”  My friend and email correspondent is a Jets’ fan and he took that comment in a far less constructive manner than it was intended:

“… [Bleep] [Bleeping] parity.  It’s bullsh*t.  The Jets haven’t won anything for 51 years…”

My retort was that the Jets had won a Super Bowl (after the 1968 season) and that there were teams that had never won a Super Bowl or an NFL championship.  If he wanted to rail against NFL parity as a sham, he could have picked a better example.  We closed the exchange of emails with a pair of insulting suggestions for each other and that sent me to do some research.

The Jets have indeed had 51 years intervene since their Super Bowl win over the Baltimore Colts.  But the Jets – and the Jets’ fans – are not nearly in the worst condition around the league.

• Bengals:  The team began play in 1968 – the year the Jets won the Super Bowl – and the Bengals have never won an NFL championship or a Super Bowl.  Their fans have been disappointed for 52 years.
• Bills:  The team won the AFL Championship in 1965; the cupboard has been bare since then.  Their fans have been disappointed for 54 years.
• Falcons:  The Falcons’ first season was in 1966; they have never won a championship of any kind.  Their fans have also been disappointed for 54 years.
• Browns:  Their last championship was the NFL Championship in 1964.  Their fans have been disappointed for 55 years – – except for those few years in the 1990s when there was no Cleveland Browns team to disappoint them.
• Chargers:  They won the AFL Championship in 1963 – and nothing since then.  Their fans have been disappointed for 56 years.
• Titans:  Back when the team was in Houston playing as the Oilers, it won the AFL Championship last in 1961.  Their fans have been disappointed for 58 years.
• Vikings:  The team first played in 1961 and has never won an NFL Championship or a Super Bowl.  Their fans have been disappointed for 58 years.
• Lions:  The Lions were NFL Champions in 1957 and have on nothing since then.  Their fans have been disappointed for 62 years.

[Aside:  After winning that NFL Championship, the Lions traded away QB, Bobby Layne, who was not pleased with the trade at all.  He “put a curse on the Lions” saying they would not win another championship for 50 years.  He underestimated the ineptitude of the franchise.]

• Cardinals:  The Cardinals won the NFL Championship in 1947 and have won squadoosh since them.  They have the longest drought in terms of championships among the current NFL teams.  Their fans – in Chicago, St. Louis and in Arizona – have been disappointed for 72 years.

I must admit that I was surprised at how many teams have gone longer without winning a title than the Jets.  I knew the Cardinals, Lions and Chargers would be on “the list” but I did not think there would be a total of 9 teams on “the list”.

Finally, here is something from Dwight Perry’s Sideline Chatter column in the Seattle Times about a sporting event that was done in by COVID-19:

“This year’s John Deere Classic, scheduled for July 9-12, has been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“In lieu of a news release, the PGA Tour announced the breakup in a John Deere letter.”

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

 

 

Before I get to the “story of the day”, let me handle some pending items.  First there is an erratum that needs to be acknowledged.  I said that I could only think of two instances where an NFL team changed names while staying in the same city.  An email from a reader pointed out that the Decatur Staleys became the Chicago Staleys who then became the Chicago Bears.  That adds a third team to the list.  I knew that the Decatur Staleys had become the Chicago Bears, but I did not know until yesterday that they were also the Chicago Staleys at one point.

The other pending item is a response to a reader comment/question regarding the removal of Marge Schott’s name from the University of Cincinnati baseball stadium.  Here is the reader’s comment/question:

“If a donor makes contribution to a building fund WITH THE STIPULATION that the building be named after him (essentially naming rights) wouldn’t the school be obligated to retain the name? They took his/her money. hate it that much? Buy the rights back, or knock it down.

“BTW, check out the timeline. The school took her money years AFTER the anti-black, anti-gay, and pro-Hitler statements, and after she had been run out of baseball.”

I posed that question to several attorneys of my acquaintance and got back several responses.  I will excerpt them and/or blend them here:

“ … though never having had the opportunity to represent someone with enough money to donate in exchange for naming rights, for sure the deal is memorialized in a written document, and I suspect that document has an escape clause or three. Or maybe a clause that reduces repayment by a certain percentage every year after the first 10, or 20, or 50.”

“Then there’s the issue of who’s going to fight to enforce the stipulation … Of course, views are often affected by the availability of large amounts of money, but I don’t know if Marge left any family, or who or what were the residual beneficiaries of her estate.  For all I know she was a cat lover who left the remainder of her estate to the Cincinnati SPCA, and an organization like that would probably not want to be on the other side of this kind of issue.”

AND …

“I think the answer would depend on whether there was an enforceable agreement (for example, a written contract) that accompanied the gift.  Sometimes a donor makes a gift and the grateful recipient offers to name a building, or  gallery, or whatever after the donor but this offer by itself may not be a binding promise. If there was no written agreement an agreement can still be enforced but it is far more difficult since there are likely to be differing recollections as to what was agreed to.

“Even if there is a written agreement, it would depend on what all the clauses in the agreement say.  Institutions often leave themselves wiggle room to account for future events – For example  sometimes buildings, especially on college campuses, are torn down to make way for new ones, park benches are blown away in storms, etc.  And art galleries often store a donated work of art in the basement after agreeing to exhibit it with a plaque naming the donor because the donated art is no longer of public interest.  And if a recipient institution includes a clause in the gift contract that a building can be renamed when it is “in the best interests of the institution or the public”  it has wiggle room to rename the building even when it is not torn down.  The agreement may also provide that even if a building is to be named after a donor, the donor’s gift can be returned and the name removed.  So, there is no simple answer to your reader’s question of whether the stadium has a legal obligation without knowing more about what was agreed to.”

AND – – as a footnote…

“I’m sure you’ve noticed the increasing trend to name not only buildings but also parts of buildings after donors (e.g. the lobby, the theater, the event room, etc.).   Not being rich I am aiming more simply –  a Joe Flabeetz Toilet Stall perhaps.”

[Aside:  We all know that Joe Flabeetz is not an attorney; his name appears here to protect the anonymity of my correspondent.]

THE story of the day – – and perhaps a story that will provide folks with a week’s worth of commentary – – is the Patrick Mahomes Contract.  It is so big and extends for so long that even the details are difficult to grasp.  I first heard that it was a 10-year deal worth $400M; then Adam Schefter said it was worth $450M as an extension on Mahomes’ current two year contract meaning that the total deal was 12-years and $477M; this morning, there is a report that the deal – including incentives could be worth $503M through the 2031 NFL season.  Let us try to cut through the hyperbole and minimize the superlatives here:

• This is the largest potential value for a sports contract that I can recall in any of the major US sports.  [Yes, there is a superlative there; it is unavoidable.]
• This is an awfully long contract for a player in a sport where injuries often cut short careers.  Reports say that the guaranteed money in the event of an injury is $141M.
• Mahomes is only 24 years old; barring injury, he is probably not yet at his prime.
• Andy Reid is 62 years old; he will be 74 years old when Mahomes contract expires.  Andy Reid may have signed his “quarterback for life” regarding his coaching career…

As the NBA players begin to assemble in the “Orlando Bubble”, there has been plenty of attention paid to the results of COVID-19 tests and which players have chosen to sit out the isolation games in Orlando.  Here in Curmudgeon Central, I went looking for teams that were advantaged or disadvantaged by the idea of playing in empty gyms in the “Bubble” as opposed to teams that were hit by a bunch of virus cases or players who opted out.

• Looks to me as if the Sixers are the biggest losers in this concept.  When the NBA pulled the plug on the regular season almost 4 months ago, the Sixers had a home record of 29-2.  There will be no “home games” in the “Bubble”…
• [Aside:  The Bucks will get hit with a similar disadvantage in the “Bubble”.  Their home record back in March was 28-3.]
• Looks to me as if the Lakers are the biggest winners in this concept.  The Lakers “road record” for the season is 26-6 and it seems to me that every game for every team in the “bubble” is the moral equivalent of a “road game”.

Finally, Dwight Perry had this item in the Seattle Times recently.  It probably applies to lots of sporting events and particularly to the upcoming NBA games in the “Bubble”:

“Here’s one sports cliché you might not be hearing for a while: ‘We just wanted to take the crowd out of the game.’”

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

 

 

  

It is certainly not without precedent for me to write about a kerfuffle regarding the name of the Washington team in the NFL.  What feels different this time around, is that the real missing ingredient from all the rhetorical and moral skirmishes of the past is in the mix this time.  That missing ingredient, the one that I have always said would be the sine qua non, is money.  So long as Danny Boy Snyder and the NFL do not see a disruption in their revenue streams, the advocates for a name change are pissing into the wind.

What is different this time around is that two major NFL sponsors, Nike and Pepsi, are on the side of changing the name to the point where Nike has taken all of the Skins’ apparel items off the Nike website and Pepsi saw a letter from shareholders who control more than $600B in assets asking the company to withdraw all support to the team.  That is the start of “economic pressure” and it adds to a direct statement from FedEx to change the team name.

FedEx owns the naming rights to the Skins’ dilapidated stadium and FedEx founder Fred Smith is also a minority owner of the Skins’ franchise.  Since FedEx owns naming rights, I guess it would be possible for them to change the name to FedUp Field; I am sure the NFL image sentries would love that.

Danny Boy Snyder has instituted a thorough review of this entire matter.  [Translation: He is going to try to find a way out of this mess such that he does not look like a giant sphincter.]  Good luck to him in that endeavor.  It was about 5 years ago when this same kerfuffle was in the news that The Onion had a great headline to one of its articles.  Sadly, it will not be a way out of the box for Danny Boy Snyder in 2020:

“Washington Redskins change team name to D. C. Redskins”

NFL teams have changed names over the history of the league but normally a name change accompanies a city change too:

• Cleveland Browns become Baltimore Ravens
• Houston Oilers become Tennessee Titans
• Dallas Texans become KC Chiefs

[Aside:  City changes sometimes retain team names such as the Colts, Rams and Raiders.]

I can only think of two NFL teams that changed names and stayed in the same city.

1. The Boston Braves became the Boston Redskins then the Washington Redskins.
2. The NY Titans became the NY Jets.

I said above that economics was squarely in the mix this time the name change argument was front and center.  Here is an example of the misapplication of economics to the issue.  Last week, the President of the National Congress of American Indians requested that the players threaten a boycott if the name was not changed.  Using rough numbers, there are 2000 players who will be in the NFL in 2020 – – assuming there is a season in 2020 – – and those players would take down approximately $6.4B in salaries.  The President of the National Congress of American Indians did not suggest any means by which even a portion of that forgone $6.4B might be recouped.

The time for rhetoric here has long since passed.  Just change the name and put this issue to a merciful death.  Lots of folks are out there suggesting new names for the team and some people feel compelled to keep “Red” as part of the team name.  Some of those suggestions include “Redhawks” and “Redtails”; I guess this follows in the path trod by St. John’s University which changed from “Redmen” to “Red Storm”.  One team name that should offend no one because it is so obviously correct would be:

• Washington Gridlock

That would honor the traffic situation here and the political situation nationally…

One positive bit of NFL news is that the league and the players’ union are negotiating some of the details regarding a 2020 season in the days of COVID-19.  The league wants to cut the Exhibition Games from 4 down to 2; the players union wants to cut the Exhibition Games from 4 down to ZERO.  I can be happy with any outcome from this negotiation that results in fewer than 4 Exhibition Games.

Reports have revealed some of the details of Cam Newton’s contract with the New England Patriots:

• The Base Salary is $1.05M with $500K guaranteed
• Roster bonuses and other performance incentives could make this worth $7.5M
• Contract term is 1- year
• Patriots retained the right to put the franchise tag on Newton after the 2020 season – – if there is one.

That last item is interesting.  Dak Prescott just signed a 1-year contract under the franchise tag with the Dallas Cowboys worth $31.41M.  If Newton “gets tagged” next year, that would be a significant year-over-year pay raise…

Finally, Bob Molinaro had this thought in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot last week.  It goes along with the idea we all must keep in mind regarding the 2020 NFL season; there may not be one:

“Caveat emptor: The NFL, which plans to have fans in the stands, reportedly has broached the idea of requiring customers who attend games to sign liability waivers absolving the league of responsibility for contracting COVID-19. This could open the way for a new NFL slogan: ‘On any given Sunday … you might go home with coronavirus.’”

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