Month: August 2021

The Jags released Tim Tebow after one live trial at tight end in an exhibition game.  That failed audition came after an 8-year gap in his NFL career where Tebow spent his athletic energy trying to be a baseball player for the NY Mets; that did not work either.  However, before tossing dirt on Tebow’s sporting grave – and heaping a measure of scorn on top of the disturbed soil – one should remember that Tebow was the QB for two national championship teams at Florida in his college days.  While he was able to dominate as a college player, he never really looked as if he would be an NFL QB and the reason for that is that professional football is a different game from college football.

What I found interesting about the news of Tebow’s release is that his former college coach – Urban Meyer – is now the coach of the Jags and is the guy who must have signed off on releasing his former college QB.  This will be Urban Meyer’s first year at the helm of what has been a pretty miserable franchise for the last several years.  And more than a few people have mused that it may be difficult for Meyer and his “football formula” to make the transition from the college game to the NFL game.

Several highly successful college coaches have failed to make that transition.  Chip Kelly’s move from Oregon to the Eagles, then to the Niners and then back to the college ranks at UCLA is probably the most recent example.  Other top-shelf college coaches who did not “make the jump” include:

• Bud Wilkinson – he dominated college football in the 1950s; his days with the Cardinals were barely mediocre.
• Steve Spurrier – he never did quite enough “coaching ‘em up” in the NFL; his two years with the Skins were painful to watch.
• Nick Saban – he dominates college football today; he did not dominate much of anything with the Dolphins.

However, before casting gloom and doom on Urban Meyer’s efforts in Jax, consider that there are examples of collegiate coaches who went on to have successful NFL careers as head coaches.  Here are ones that come to mind:

• Paul Brown:  In his first two seasons at Ohio State, his teams were 15-2-1 with one national championship.  The next year, he lost players to the military draft and also lost football games.  As coach of the Cleveland Browns his teams appeared in 7 NFL championship games in the 1950s and won 3 of those games.  He is in the NFL Hall of Fame.
• Pete Carroll:  His first stint as a head coach in the NFL was undistinguished; but after a successful decade or so at USC, he took over the Seahawks and turned them into constant winners going 112-63-1 with 2 Super Bowl appearances and 1 Super Bowl win.
• Jim Harbaugh:  As a college coach at San Diego and then at Stanford, Harbaugh’s record was 58-27; neither school was exactly a “powerhouse football factory.”  Then in 4 seasons with the Niners his teams went 44-19-1 with one Super Bowl appearance and two other appearances in the NFC Championship Game.  [Aside:  Harbaugh’s return to the collegiate coaching level at Michigan has been less-than-fully-successful.  He seems to have experienced some difficulty in going back to the “lower level of coaching.”
• Jimmy Johnson:  After a so-so run at Oklahoma State, he got the head coaching job at Miami where his teams went 52-9 and won a national championship over a 5-year span.  He then got the job as the head coach of the Cowboys and – thanks to the Herschel Walker trade – was able to go from a 1-15 record in 1989 to consecutive Super Bowl victories in 1992/93.  He is in the NFL Hall of Fame.
• Bobby Ross:  He had success at the college level at Georgia Tech – shared a national championship with Colorado there – and at Maryland.  In the NFL, he managed to get the Chargers to their only Super Bowl appearance in franchise history.  [Aside:  He also spent three-and-a-half seasons with the Lions, but an argument can be made that those years were somewhere between college-level coaching and full-scale NFL coaching.]
• Dick Vermeil:  His college career consisted of only 2 seasons at UCLA where his teams went 15-5-3.  He was hired to resuscitate a bleak Eagles’ franchise and in 7 seasons there he had the team in the playoffs 4 times and in the Super Bowl once.  Then he retired for 15 years doing color analysis for college football and returned to coach the Rams for 3 seasons with a Super Bowl win.

As I was thinking about people to put on this list, I was of two minds regarding one name:

• Barry Switzer:  From 1973 to 1988, Switzer was a major force in college football at Oklahoma winning 3 national championships and 12 conference titles.  His time in college football was quite different from the NFL game; his teams ran the wishbone offense – something that never showed up on Sunday afternoons.  In 1994, he returned to the sidelines as the coach of the Dallas Cowboys after Jimmy Johnson was fired by Jerry Jones.  And there is my balance point.  Switzer had a successful 4-year stint with the Cowboys winning a Super Bowl in 1995, but he took over a team that had already won back-to-back Super Bowls.  The other coaches on this list who I assert “made the adjustment to the pro game,” had to do so with far less of an initial roster.  You make the call…

Finally, apropos of nothing, I shall close with a thought from Mark Twain:

“Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”

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

About a week ago, I wrote about tampering in the NBA and gave the two examples that came to my mind of what the NBA considered to be tampering and the punishments they meted out.  I said then that I would not be surprised if someone added to my list of examples.  Well, the reader in Houston – a font of knowledge of sports history and stats – provided the following in an email:

• “The Heat were discovered to have tampered with Pat Riley in the mid-1990s by negotiating with Riley while he was the head coach of the Knicks. The Heat settled and avoided league-imposed penalties, by compensating the Knicks with $1 million and their first-round draft pick in the following season.
• “The NBA fined the Hawks, Rockets, and Kings in the mid-2010s for tampering. The Hawks talked of the possibility of signing Chris Paul and Dwight Howard to prospective season ticket holders, the Rockets published an offseason preview to prospective season ticket purchasers with scouting reports of players currently under contract to other teams, but who would become free agents that summer, and Michael Malone spoke about reuniting with Chris Paul when introduced as head coach of the Kings.
• “The Raptors were fined when Drake asked the crowd at a Toronto concert in 2014 to show Kevin Durant, who was in attendance, what it would be like to play in that city. Drake was an “ambassador” for the Raptors at the time.
• “The league fined Phil Jackson in 2014 when he spoke about the Knicks’ interest in hiring Derek Fisher as head coach while Fisher was still under a player contract with the Thunder. Fisher was still hired by the Knicks a few days later.
• “Mark Cuban was fined in 2015 for speaking publicly about agreements the Mavericks had made with Wesley Matthews and DeAndre Jordan during the moratorium. Cuban was also fined in 2010 for comments about LeBron James, as was Steve Kerr when he was GM of the Suns.
• “Daryl Morey of the 76ers was fined late last year in response to a later deleted social media post Morey made regarding Harden while he was still with the Rockets.”

Thanks to the reader in Houston for the illumination.  Interestingly, the rules about tampering apply to owners, coaches, scouts, and players.  So far, we have examples involving team officials, owners, and coaches – – but not players involved in tampering.  If you believe that players have never been involved in such behaviors, you probably also believe that Instagram is an app that puts your grandmother on speed dial…

I was channel surfing yesterday in search of an interesting sporting event which immediately put any NFL Exhibition Game out of bounds.  On ABC I found the opening game in La Liga for FC Barcelona – – their first game without Lionel Messi in about 15 years.  That was interesting enough to get me to put down the remote but there was an added incentive.  The announcers for the game were Ian Darke and Steve McManaman and I genuinely enjoy that announcing duo.

Ian Darke does play-by-play and he does it in a minimalist style that I find easy to listen to and a style that is in contrast with too many of today’s play by play guys who simply will not shut up for even an instant.  For those of you old enough to remember Ray Scott as an NFL play by play guy, Ian Darke is similarly frugal with words.

Two other refreshing things about this duo are:

1. They are not given to hyperbole.  When a player makes and completes a pass to a wide-open teammate who then gets a clear shot on goal, they do not stray off into the world of “great” and “amazing” and “fantastic” as descriptors.  They say enthusiastically that it is a “lovely ball” and focus attention on the outcome and not the act itself.
2. They are not averse to critical commentary.  I am not aware of Ian Darke ever playing soccer, but he has been announcing it for almost 40 years; McManaman played professional soccer for 15 years for Liverpool, Manchester City and Real Madrid in addition to being on the English National Team for 8 years.  They know good play and they know poor play; they know good officiating and they know poor officiating.  Best of all, they tell you what they are seeing on the pitch both good and bad.  It is a level of candor that simply does not exist in most US television sports presentations.

For the record, Barcelona won yesterday’s game over Real Sociedad by a score of 4-2.  ESPN and ABC are both owned by Disney Corp and ESPN has signed up for television rights to La Liga for the next several years.  I hope that means that I get to watch more games with Darke and McManaman on the microphone.

In tennis, Roger Federer announced his withdrawal from the upcoming US Open and said that he will undergo knee surgery because that is his only “glimmer of hope” that he might be able to compete at the highest levels of tennis in the future.  Federer is 40 years old; in tennis that is paleolithic.  Evidently, the surgery he will endure will go beyond a “nip here and a tuck there.”  Federer said in an Instagram posting that he will be “on crutches for many weeks and out of the game for many months.”

Last year, Federer had two arthroscopic procedures done on his knee; based on his announcement yesterday, those were not sufficient to alleviate whatever problem exists within his knee.  He is realistic about the upcoming procedure:

“ … don’t get me wrong, I know how difficult it is at this age right now to do another surgery and try [a comeback].  But I want to be healthy.  I will go through the rehab process, I think, also with a goal while I am still active which I think is going to help me during this long period of time.”

Finally, since I mentioned my TV viewing from yesterday, let me close with this comment from Groucho Marx:

“I must say I find television very educational.  The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.”

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

Greetings to all on the only occurrence of “Friday the Thirteenth” in 2021.  Let us hope that the Fates choose to let us of easily today instead of dropping an entire year’s worth of misfortune on the world today.

Earlier this week, racehorse trainer, Jorge Navarro, got a personal dose of bad news.  Navarro pleaded guilty to charges involving a scheme to give horses performance-enhancing drugs.  The Federal prosecutors in this case say that Navarro and about twenty other folks were an international cabal that used drugs to speed up horses for specific races.  The plea entered here was part of a plea deal and there is one aspect of that deal which has me scratching my head:

• Navarro agreed to pay restitution of $25M “reflecting winnings obtained through doping”.

That is a lot of restitution to be sure, but to whom will it be paid?  There is no way to identify the bettors who lost their wagers to the souped-up horses that Navarro put on the track.  If the idea of “restitution” is to compensate victims of the criminal activity, I wonder how that $25M is going to be split up…

Another bit of dirty laundry seems to have come out of the washer with far less dire consequences than one might have imagined.  Recall the sexual assault incidents at Baylor that went unreported, uninvestigated and covered up between 5 and 10 years ago.  That is the set of circumstances that made coach, Art Briles radioactive and cost him the job there.  Well, the NCAA finished its investigation into the matter having taken a leisurely track through the miasma there.  Here are the salient results from the investigation:

• While the NCAA found the actions at Baylor to be ”unacceptable,” it also found that none of the sexual assaults or interpersonal violence incidents violated any NCAA rules.
• The NCAA report signals that Briles’ radioactivity has not completely decayed over the past 5 years saying, “The head coach failed to meet even the most basic expectations of how a person should react to the kind of conduct at issue in this case.”
• Evidently while meandering around in the muck and mire here, the NCAA super-sleuths found some other minor infractions that led to Baylor football being fined $5K, serving 4 years on probation and undergoing some recruiting limitations.

I see this result as a mirror image of another case where everything seems to be reversed.  In short, this case involves behaviors that are criminal but not violations of any NCAA rules.  At the end of the day, the attorney representing Art Briles could and did issue a statement claiming that his client was “completely exonerated” and that the report “cleared the way for Mr. Briles to return to coaching college football.”  Wow…

Now recall the cases where federal prosecutors found violations of federal law in the practice of paying basketball recruits money under the table.  Those actions were violations of NCAA rules, but the Feds convinced juries that the payments to recruits were actions that defrauded the universities where the recruits enrolled.  Talk about mirror images…

Having spoken of Art Briles and his days at Baylor, that leads me to note that one of his major recruits there was RG3 who won the Heisman Trophy in 2011.  Griffin has just signed a contract with ESPN to be a football analyst and reports say he will be part of ESPN’s coverage of both college and NFL football.  Throughout his playing career in the NFL, Griffin has shown himself to be bright, telegenic, and enthusiastic with a sense of humor.  He has all the elements it takes for success on TV; now the trick will be for him to develop those talents into a desirable persona on camera.

When I read about his signing with ESPN, the first thing that came to mine is that ESPN televises a lot of Big-12 games; and as a Baylor grad, RG3 might be a natural addition to the broadcast booth for Big-12 games.  Now, after reading about the NCAA report, I am rethinking that position.  Griffin was at Baylor when some of the alleged assaults happened meaning some of his teammates were perpetrators.  To be sure, there have never been any allegations that Griffin engaged in any of those activities in any way, but I now wonder if putting him in the booth to be part of a Baylor football telecast so soon after this NCAA report hit the streets is a good idea.  It will be interesting to see what ESPN does there.

Griffin spent his early career in the NFL with the Washington “NFL Team That Shall Not Be Named.”  He is not the only QB from that franchise who is embarking on a broadcasting career this week.  Alex Smith has also signed on with ESPN according to reports and the network plans to use him in studio as an NFL analyst on various ESPN programs.  Using as a guide their on-camera presence and demeanor during playing days, I would say that Griffin and Smith are totally different.  Smith has always been measured and analytical when on the microphone.  The similarity of their background as QBs in Washington and their proximal signings with ESPN will make for interesting comparisons as they pursue their broadcasting careers.

One more broadcasting note, this morning…  Nate Burleson is leaving Good Morning Football on NFLN to be part of CBS This Morning.  Burleson will continue to do small bits with Good Morning Football as well as appearing on NFL Today on CBS on the weekends.  One report said that if James Brown were to retire, Nate Burleson would be the betting favorite to replace him on NFL Today.  But Burleson’s major line of work will be CBS This Morning which is a mainstream news program and not a sports show.

I have liked Nate Burleson from the first time I saw him on TV about 5 years ago.  I think he and Phil Simms carry NFL Today and their contributions are far more insightful and more cogent than the mostly predictable offerings from Bill Cowher and Boomer Esiason.  I have not read any reports about who will replace Burleson on Good Morning Football or even if NFLN will continue to have four people as co-hosts on the program.  Personally, I think RG3 would be a good fit for that program – – but he is part of a different network as of today.

Finally, I shall close today with a comment about actors and casting by Alfred Hitchcock:

“Disney, of course, has the best casting.  If he doesn’t like an actor, he just tears him up.”

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

Sports Curmudgeon  8/12/21

Yesterday’s rant focused on formulaic reports emanating from NFL training camps with an emphasis on a relatively new line of such stories over the past several years – – reporting on progress or lack of progress in contract extension negotiations.  In addition to the sorts of things mentioned yesterday, there is a new line of reporting that I hope will be unique to 2021.  Here is the storyline:

• Joe Flabeetz tests positive for COVID-19 and/or Joe has previously said that he has not taken the COVID-19 vaccine for any of a variety of reasons.
• Joe returns to training camp after the separation called for in the league’s COVID-19 protocols.
• The first report is not about how he did at practice but about what he said when asked if he would now take the vaccine.

If the storyline ended with Joe’s answer to that question – either yes, no, maybe or it is none of your business – I would be fine with that.  The problem is that the reports all go off into predictable realms:

• If Joe says yes, then why did it take him so long?
• If Joe says no, then does he realize how he is potentially jeopardizing his family members or “the team.”
• If Joe says maybe, then reporters take that as a license to ask the vaccine question repeatedly.
• If Joe says it is none of your business, then he is being a petulant, spoiled, entitled brat.

Those storyline paths are well trodden; we really do not need any more of them.  I realize that I may step on some toes here, but I want to talk about COVID vaccines and vaccinations today.  My education is in the physical sciences; I have a PhD in physical chemistry (from LONG ago); I am not a medical professional nor an epidemiologist.  My science education has convinced me of a specific reality:

• Many of the workings of life and of the universe are only partially understood – – and yet they can be counted on to behave in a predictable and reliable manner.  Gravity is one such thing; no one quite knows how – or why – gravity works, but every building, road and bridge relies on it behaving tomorrow exactly as it has since people began to observe it as a force back in the 1650s.

The nature, behavior and mechanisms of viruses in general – and of the COVID-19 virus specifically – are not perfectly understood.  Nonetheless, they are understood sufficiently that the various vaccines that have been developed can and do reduce the chances of getting infected and the chances of harboring the virus such that you can pass it on to others and the chances that the vaccine recipient will get a severe case of COVID-19 and die.  Controlled tests using known and reliable procedures have shown those facts over and over.

Because the virus and its mechanism are only partially understood, the vaccine is not perfect; it is not as reliable as gravity, but neither are many other things that people rely on with their lives:

• The welds holding the wings on an airplane are not perfect – – but we fly on airplanes.
• Dams sometimes burst with disastrous results – – but we continue to build them and rely on them.
• Sunscreen reduces the chance of contracting skin cancer; it is not perfect as a prevention by any means – – but people are still well advised to use it.

Personally, I believe the odds are so tilted in favor of vaccination that I was early in line to “get jabbed” when my age group was given access to the vaccine last February.  Moreover, I believe that everyone who is of an age where the research has shown sufficient rates of efficacy and safety should “get jabbed.”  Having said that, I think it is wrong to be a “Vaccine-Crusader” just as it is wrong to be a “Vaccine-Know Nothing.”

I have to suppress a laugh when I hear an athlete say that he has not taken the vaccine because he needs to “do more research on the topic.”  If he tried to do a double-blind test on several thousand random citizens out of his basement, he would probably be arrested for practicing medicine without certification.  He is not going to “do more research;” he is either going to use that a justification why he continues to avoid vaccination, or he means that he will continue to search on the Internet for information that supports his decision not to be vaccinated.

My problem is that the reporters writing these stories know that this is the case.  There is no reason to write about it again; it has already been done to death.  If a reporter wants to be a “Vaccine-Crusader” here, he/she should be pestering the NFL and the NFLPA about why they do not agree to make COVID-19 vaccinations a sine qua non for NFL employment.  If a reporter just wants to write a story about the ignorance or the stubbornness of a specific athlete who has refused the vaccine, then just say that specifically and move on.  Stop pretending that there is any “news information” in a report that the athlete is “continuing to ponder the question of inoculation.”

I said above that I hoped that 2021 would be the only year we would have to deal with this particular narrative.  That is an aspiration; I would hope that COVID-19 is not a matter of concern by the time the 2022 sports calendar begins with pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training.  I certainly would not bet that to be the case – – but I can hope it is the case and I can hope that we will have much less formulaic coverage in 2022 if need be.

Finally, let me close with an observation from playwright and satirist, Karl Kraus, which seems appropriate today:

“Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.”

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

Technically, the Dog Days of August end today.  The phrase is meant to denote the time of the year when the heat and humidity in the Northern Hemisphere is at its most uncomfortable level; statistically, those meteorological conditions tend to improve starting tomorrow until we get to winter, and we all freeze our butts off.  In the world of sports, there is a different meaning to the phrase, “Dog Days of August”.  Basically, it means that while we are sweltering in the heat and humidity, there is a dearth of juicy sporting attractions to take our minds off our discomfort.  Consider:

• There are no collegiate sports of note happening now.
• The NHL and the NBA can only provide the distraction of free agency.
• MLB is ongoing but has not yet reached the drama of pennant races and the stretch drive.
• The CFL season just began – but it is a minor diversion for many US sports fans.
• The NFL is in “training camp stage” and is putting on Exhibition Games.

That is pretty thin gruel for sports fans – and it does not present folks who spend time commenting on sporting happenings with a cornucopia of things to talk about.  Here is an item from Greg Cote of the Miami Herald that summarizes all that needs to be said about NFL Exhibition Games:

“There is little worse in sports than NFL exhibition games, and a reminder poured forth in Pittsburgh’s 16-3 yawner over Dallas in a Hall of Fame Game bereft of star players. Full preseason Week 1 is this week with 16 scrub-filled games spread across Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.”

And so, without meaningful game stories and/or game preparation stories to offer up, far too many writers/commentators turn to formulaic stories that come out around this time of the year each and every year.  Here are some of the generic tales:

• Veteran free agent signee, Joe Flabeetz, is in the best shape of his career as he tries to rekindle the magic he had two seasons ago with a former team.
• Rookie phenom, Sam Glotz, is taking it one day at a time as he learns the nuances of the pro game.
• Injured star player, Joe Bopf, is making steady progress in his rehabilitation from surgery and expects to be ready by Week 1.
• New defensive coordinator, Bob Alooey, wants his players to be more aggressive this year and to play downhill – – even though the field is level.

You get the idea; you know you have read a hundred stories like that in prior years and you have probably read at least one of them already this year.  There is a genre of common story threads that seems to have evolved over the past several years that was not there 40 or 50 years ago.  That genre would be insider reports on contract negotiations for extensions for key players on various teams.  Will he sign?  Will he “bet on himself”?  What did the team offer?  What  is his demand that is hanging up the deal?  Will negotiations continue after the season starts?  I have already gotten tired of those stories and the season will not begin for another month.

I view all the contract stories that involve “insider reports” based on unnamed sources with about the same level of credulity as I give to the keynote speeches at the national conventions by our two political parties.  Every once in a while, there is a nugget in there of something interesting and/or revealing but for the most part it is manipulated prose at the very best.

I know this will never happen because there is a need to fill space in physical newspapers and a need to keep visitors engaged on websites, but here is how I would like to see all these stories about ongoing negotiations for contract extensions handled:

• Name every source.  If the source will not give permission for that, consider that the information he gave to the writer is slanted at best and certainly not the whole truth.  In that case, do not report it at all.
• Don’t take sides.  If the reporter takes sides, the reporter become spart of the story and not the reporter of the story.  If that story cannot be written, publish nothing.
• Save energy for when it counts – – write about the reality of the signed contract extension when it happens if it ever happens.

So, at this time of the year, if you are reading something related to the NFL, you are probably in a position where you pick your poison when you decide on which link to click.  Personally, I am at a point where I ignore most of the “training camp highlights and headlines” and I absolutely ignore any sort of report on the progress or lack of progress toward a contact extension for a player.

Finally, to demonstrate what I mean by having a dearth of things to write about in these Dog Days of August, consider this headline from yesterday at CBSSports.com in the world of college football:

• LSU’s live tiger mascot, Mike VII, is fully vaccinated against COVID-19

The prosecution rests, Your Honor.

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

Bobby Bowden died last weekend at the age of 91.  Bowden took over the Florida State football program in 1976; at that time, the Seminoles’ program was in complete disarray.  Bowden remained the coach in Tallahassee until retiring in 2009.  His record at Florida State was 304-97-4.  By all accounts he was as good a person as he was a football coach.

Rest in peace, Bobby Bowden.

I am compelled to apologize for a lapse of memory and an infusion of laziness that led me to say – totally incorrectly – last week that the Hamilton Tiger Cats won the 2019 Grey Cup game over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.  I was so sure of that recollection that I did not bother to take the 30 seconds necessary to check out my memory; that was the laziness kicking in.  A reader pointed out my error as a comment to last week’s rant, two other readers informed me via email that I got it wrong; Gregg Drinnan sent an ever so gently worded email pointing out the need for a correction.

Thanks for the civility of the communications regarding my error.  Indeed, the result of the Grey Cup game in 2019 was:

• Winnipeg Blue Bombers 33 – – Hamilton Tiger-Cats 12

Mea maxima culpa…

Speaking of emails from readers, I got one that linked me to a report at mlb.com about a perfect game that is not counted as such in baseball’s records.  It was in 1917 and Babe Ruth was the starting pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.  Ruth walked the leadoff hitter and was more than upset with the umpire about the calls that led to the walk.  The umpire told Ruth to get back on the mound and be quiet or he would eject Ruth; Ruth told the umpire if he was ejected, he would “bust you in the nose”.  The umpire threw Ruth out of the game and Ruth obliged by punching the umpire and had to be restrained by the manager and several policemen.

Ernie Shore came into the game with a runner on first.  That runner was caught stealing and Shore proceeded to retire the next 26 batters in a row.  In baseball’s records, this is considered a no-hit game but not a perfect game.  Po-tay-toe … Po-tah-toe…

Last week, there was a Reuters report printed in the NY Post with this headline:

• Germany’s modern pentathlon coach disqualified after punching horse

Obviously, I could not just let that pass by without clicking to find out what happened.  The first paragraph of the report summarizes the situation well:

“Germany’s modern pentathlon coach Kim Raisner will not be part of Saturday’s men’s individual competition at the Tokyo Olympics after she hit a horse with her fist and urged rider Annika Schleu to “really hit” the horse when it refused to jump.”

Naturally, my mind immediately went to a famous scene in the movie Blazing Saddles – no , not the campfire scene – where Alex Karras playing the role of Mongo rides into town on an ox.  He ties the ox up to a rail outside the saloon and someone on horseback says he cannot park the ox there.  Mongo walks over and knocks the horse out with one punch.  Seems to me that there is truth in the adage:

• Life imitates art…

There is big news in the world of international soccer.  Lionel Messi has left FC Barcelona where he has been since 2004.  I have no interest in debating the question as to whether he is the best player in the world; suffice it to say he is in the top handful of candidates for that label.  He wants to stay with Barcelona and the club offered him a contract that he agreed to but the rules in La Liga that are analogous to salary cap rules in various sports here in the US would not allow that contract to be in force.

I will not pretend to understand the purpose of those rules or the intricacies of the rules, but my understanding is that each club in La Liga is limited to the amount of debt it can carry relative to the salary paid to the players.  This is done to provide a level playing field in the league – – although I am not sure how that works in practice because the two teams with the biggest debt (Real Madrid and FC Barcelona) are the two dominant teams year after year.  Reports say that the current debt for FC Barcelona is more than 1 billion euros (approximately $1.2B).

What is confusing to me is that FC Barcelona and Real Madrid both rejected a bid from a private equity firm to inject more than 2 billion euros into La Liga which would have reduced the debt level for both clubs significantly.  The hang-up has something to do with TV revenue rights and such over the next 50 years – – but the subtleties of that proposed deal are way above my level of understanding.  Nevertheless, it seems to be the case that:

1. Messi wants to stay with FC Barcelona
2. FC Barcelona wants Messi
3. FC Barcelona cannot sign Messi because of the club’s debt level
4. A private equity firm wants to buy a piece of La Liga which would reduce the debt level
5. FC Barcelona rejects that offer.

Lionel Messi is not planning to retire; there are rumors that he will sign with Paris St. Germain (French Ligue 1) or Manchester City (English Premier League).  We have not heard the last of this story.

Finally, on the subject of debt, here is a comment from actor, John Barrymore:

“A man must properly pay the fiddler.  In my case, it so happened that a whole symphony orchestra had to be subsidized.”

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

Former Astros’ ace, JR Richard, passed away Wednesday night.  Richard was one of the dominant pitchers in MLB in the late 70s.  At one point, he and Nolan Ryan were part of the team’s starting rotation making a series against the Astros not a lot of fun for opponents.  His career was brief; it ended when he was 30 years old after he suffered a major stroke during warmups for a game.

Rest in peace, JR Richard.

The Steelers and the Cowboys played a meaningless exhibition game last night as an adjunct to the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.  Meanwhile in Winnipeg, the CFL kicked off its regular season last night after a fully dark year in 2020 thanks to COVID-19.  The game last night matched the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers; those two teams were the opponents in the last Grey Cup game in December 2019.  The Tiger-Cats won the Grey Cup game; the Blue Bombers won last night’s game by a score of 19-6.

Tomorrow night, the rebranded Edmonton Elks will make their debut hosting the Toronto Redblacks.  I hope this season goes well for the CFL because I have to believe that the league and the teams are financially stressed after the 2020 non-season.  Back before the COVID crisis, there were plans for a CFL expansion team in the Maritime Provinces that would have taken the field this year.  Looking at the schedule, it seems that existence of this new team has been postponed for now.

Reports say that there is opposition in Halifax – the proposed home base for the Atlantic Schooners expansion team – to building a stadium for the team.  I am certainly not an expert in Canadian geography, but I have traveled to the Maritime provinces twice and Halifax is certainly the largest city I recall in either Nova Scotia or New Brunswick.  That raises a question in my mind:

• Could the CFL put an expansion team in Quebec City, or would that cause an injury to the Montreal Alouettes?

For the 2021 season the CFL has a no-nonsense policy when it comes to game cancellations and COVID outbreaks.  Forget the rhetorical flourishes around the edges of the policy and the announcement of the policy, here is the meat:

• If a game must be canceled due to a COVID-19 outbreak, only players on teams where 85% or more of the players and staff are vaccinated will get paid.  Moreover, this applies without regard to which team caused the cancellation.

Having mentioned the Dallas Cowboys in passing above, a friend sent me a copy of an article in the New York Times dated January 1, 1984.  The Dallas Cowboys were “up for sale” and this article had the following quotation:

“I feel sorry for the poor guy who is going to buy the Dallas Cowboys.  It’s a no-win situation for him, because if he wins, well so what, they’ve won through the years and if he loses, which seems likely, because they’re having troubles, he’ll be known to the world as a loser.”

Later that year, a consortium led by “Bum” Bright bought the Cowboys from Clint Murchison for $85M and then sold the team in 1989 to Jerry Jones for $140M.  The “Bright Consortium” turned a tidy 65% profit in 5 years; today the Cowboys franchise – according to Forbes – is worth $6.5B.

In case you are wondering who was quoted by the NY Times back in 1984, it was Donald J. Trump.

Bob Molinaro had this to say in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot this week:

“TV timeout: NBC’s Olympic viewership is way, way down from the audience size for the 2016 Rio Games. The fragmented nature of broadcasts from the other side of the world — and confusion over where and when to find the programming — is being blamed. So is Simone Biles, poor thing. Then there’s debate over how many are watching on streaming services, but when this subject comes up I begin to lose consciousness.”

I am part of the “lost audience” for these Games.  A big part of my absence is the unavoidable fact that Tokyo is 12 time zones away from Northern Virginia meaning that most of the live coverage of events is very inconvenient for me.  For teams that I have followed closely, I can watch a replay of a game where I know the outcome because I watch it differently and watch for things I would not have watched for had the game been live.  Such is not the case for Olympic events; for me, they lose a lot if I know the outcome.

Oh, and one other thing about the coverage.  I understand the TV adage that “Sex sells,” but there has been a huge overdose of beach volleyball coverage in these games.  The women participants are attractive and less-than-fully clothed; I get that.  What the network execs seem not to realize is that an audience expecting to see Olympic events is not going to be mesmerized for a long time by scantily clad women.  Those execs should have an example of this to learn from:

• If “Sex sells,” applies to women’s sports on TV, then the late but not lamented “Lingerie League” of women’s pro football would have been a smash hit.
• It wasn’t!

Finally, here is one more item from Bob Molinaro:

“Shenanigans: The Buffalo Bills apparently are threatening to threaten that they’ll shuffle off to Austin, Texas, if the city doesn’t use taxpayer money to cover the entire cost of a new stadium. That’s a bad bluff. Austin already has a pro football team — the Texas Longhorns.”

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

Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported on the findings of an independent review of the way the NCAA deals with men’s basketball as compared to women’s basketball.  The report recommends “a combined Final Four tournament for men and women”.  You should read the Post article here.

Let me be clear; there is no way to pretend that the NCAA values women’s basketball to the same degree that it values men’s basketball and the ambience enveloping the two tournaments is very different.  Anyone who would try to argue that there is equality or even equivalency in the NCAA’s support and promotion of the two tournaments would be judged to have the mental acumen of a Kleenex.  There is a natural tendency to seek to bring the two events more in line with each other.

Having said that, I doubt that having a co-ed Final Four is going to help all that much.  The way the NCAA handles the men’s tournament calls for a football stadium venue that seats 60,000 or more fans.  [Aside:  I do not like games in such facilities; I greatly prefer to see basketball played in more compact arenas.  Nonetheless, that is how the NCAA stages the men’s Final Four.]  The tickets for the men’s Final Four are hard to come by; there is a scalper’s market for those tickets.

The women’s tournament – less highly publicized and promoted to be sure – often does not fill a basketball arena and I seriously doubt that the women’s Final Four could possibly fill a football stadium even if the NCAA handed out tickets with $20-bills stapled to them.  So, think for a moment about the logistics of a co-ed Final Four.

• Option 1:  Play the women’s games on Friday/Sunday and the men’s games on Saturday/Monday.  Put all the games on TV in prime time.  That is logistically simple; all it requires is for the NCAA to pick a city with a domed football stadium and book the venue for a slightly longer period than it does now.  Here is a problem though…  If anyone wanted to demonstrate the difference in the popularity of men’s college basketball and women’s college basketball, these four nights of television would be Exhibit One.  Friday and Sunday would see the crowd rattling around in the stadium like the proverbial bee-bee in a box car; Saturday and Monday would see a packed house.
• Option 2:  Play one men’s semi-final game and one women’s semi-final game on Friday and the other semi-final games on Saturday as TV double-headers.  Leave Sunday dark on TV and play both the women’s and men’s final games on Monday night.  While there will still be obvious disparities in crowd size and in TV ratings, this option would offer the chance to expose the women’s game to an audience that is receptive to seeing basketball games either in person or on TV.

Putting together a co-ed Final Four would not hurt anything; the venues for the next few tournaments are already set contractually so there might be some difficulty in making this happen immediately, but this is an idea that can be made to happen.  I think, however, that a co-ed Final Four will not address what I believe is the fundamental reason why men’s college basketball is the more popular sport:

• There are only a few very good women’s teams and they do not play one another very often until tournament time meaning that there are too many regular season women’s games that are either blow-outs or games involving “teams that just don’t matter”.

It simply is not entertaining to watch a basketball game where the final score is 90 – 49 and there are far too many such games on women’s college basketball schedules.  Yes, there are non-competitive men’s games too that are nothing but glorified scrimmages for the better team, but there are not as many.  Attendance at a game or tuning in to watch one on TV is generally an act that seeks entertainment; there are too many women’s college basketball games that are not even interesting let alone entertaining to get my primary attention when seeking a period of sports entertainment.

The resolution of the issues in the paragraph above is the key element needed to raise the level of interest in women’s college basketball to a point where a co-ed Final Four would not starkly display the disparate levels of interest in the two sports.  While I am not in the habit of defending the NCAA on any issue, I do not see how the NCAA is going to be able to increase the entertainment value of so many women’s games that lead up to any sort of co-ed Final Four.

The current trend in college football – – the BIG revenue generator for collegiate athletic departments – – is that the rich are getting richer.  If that momentum carries over to women’s college basketball, I doubt that any sort of “urgent action” on the part of the NCAA will be effective.  Getting the generic sports fan out there in Peoria to pay the same amount of attention to women’s college basketball as he/she does to men’s college basketball more likely requires the use of a magic wand and not just a more focused marketing effort and a co-ed Final Four.

Finally, since today’s rant has considered the creation of a co-ed Final Four, let me close with this comment about co-eds by satirist Dorothy Parker:

“If all these sweet  young things were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised.”

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

If you are old enough to remember Al Capp’s comic strip, L’il Abner, you probably recall one of the recurring characters named Joe Btfsplk.  Joe was the “world’s worst jinx”; wherever he went, there was a dark raincloud over his head and unimaginable tragedy befell anyone and everyone anywhere near him.  Joe himself was so jinxed that he did not have any vowels in his family name.

I mention that character here because Carson Wentz seems to have been hanging out with Joe Btfsplk a bit too much.  Consider:

• In 2017 – his second year in the league –  he was playing so well that some were mentioning him as an MVP candidate.  Then in Game 13 he blew out his knee and had to watch from the sidelines as the Eagles won the Super Bowl.  Before the injury, fans in Philly were suggesting that Pennsylvania needed to be renamed as Wentzlvania.
• In 2019 with an injury-depleted set of pass catchers, he and Zach Ertz basically willed the Eagles to a winning record and a brief appearance in the playoffs.
• In 2020, his game fell apart; he was benched; he and his head coach had a falling out and he was traded to the Colts – to be reunited with his former offensive coordinator.
• In the first day of training camp this year, Wentz was rolling out on a non-contact practice play and injured his foot.  The injury requires surgery and Wentz will be on the shelf for 5-12 weeks.  [Aside:  That seems to me to be an awfully large time range for his recovery; I hope that does not mean folks are not quite sure what the injury is or what the extent of the injury is.]

Coincident to the misfortune that has come Wentz’ way over the past 4-5 years, the Colts now find themselves in an interesting situation.  At the time of the injury, here were the other QBs on the Colts’ roster:

• Jacob Eason:  He was a 4^th round pick in 2020 but did not take a snap in a game last year.  If he were a horse entering his first race, a handicapper might note that he has good breeding; his father is Tony Eason who was a starting QB for both the Pats and the Jets.
• Sam Ehlinger: He is a rookie out of Texas.  He played well some weeks and marginally well on other weeks in college.
• Jalen Morton:  He is a rookie out of Prairie View A&M.  I have now told you everything I know about Jalen Morton.

I thought that the great irony would be for the Colts to go out and trade with the Bears to acquire Nick Foles.  Recall that it was Foles who subbed in for Wentz in 2017 and led the Eagles to that Super Bowl win.  And it is not as if Foles is “unavailable”; he is #3 on the depth chart for the Bears behind Andy Dalton and rookie Justin Fields.

The Colts went in a different direction – at least for the moment.  They signed free agent Brett Hundley whose career with the Green Bay Packers was to fill in for Aaron Rodgers in 2017 and to go 3-6 as a starter.  And Philip Rivers has recently said that he might – just maybe – consider un-retiring and coming back to the NFL; and he was the Colts’ starting QB for all of 2020.

The Colts were co-favorites to win the AFC South according to Las Vegas oddsmakers along with the Titans.  The win total for the Colts was 10.5.  If Wentz is “ready to go” in 5 weeks, that means he would likely miss one game and the Colts could still be on track – theoretically – for a productive year in 2021.  Of course, if Joe Btfsplk pays another visit, consider the season flushed down the toilet.

Moving on …  Yesterday in the NY Post, there was a column with this headline:

• What to consider when betting on NFL preseason games

The column was by Matt Youmans who was formerly with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and now is with VSiN.  He has a long history of writing about the nexus of sports and gambling and about picking winners.  Personally, I have zero interest in betting on NFL Preseason Games – or Spring Training Games or NBA Summer League Games or … you get the idea.  However, I think the Post headline writer might have done better by this particular column because my immediate thought when I saw the headline was:

• Don’t do it!

Switching gears …  Here is a stat that I ran across that is interesting.  After the All-Star Game, the Atlanta Braves went 9-9 in their next 18 games; that is not particularly interesting as a whole but how they did that is interesting.  The Braves had 9 one-game winning streaks and 9 one-game losing streaks to compile that record.  Someone with lots of time on his/her hands discovered that is the MLB record for alternating wins and losses.  Someone in the Braves’ marketing department should try to get a sponsorship deal with a company that makes yo-yos…

Finally, #1 son is living and working in Ireland and so, I will close today with two observations about Ireland:

“I showed my appreciation for my native land in the usual Irish way by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.”  George Bernard Shaw

And …

“ The Irish are a fair people – they never speak well of one another.”  Samuel Johnson

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