Strange Headlines; Strange Reports

Last night, I was checking various online sites to see if anything was happening that would provide fodder for comment this morning.  That led me to an item with this headline:

“NBA Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman says he will get involved in helping WNBA star Brittney Griner return to the US”

It has been a while since Rodman unleashed his geopolitical potential energy and the story that followed under that headline posed as many questions as it provided answers.  For example, Rodman said that he is planning to go to Russia this week to seek Griner’s release and that:

“I got permission to go to Russia to help that girl.  I’m trying to go this week.”

The question that arises from that statement is pretty obvious.  From whom did you ask permission and why?  Since the US Government is engaged with the Russians in negotiations that could lead to Griner’s release from her prison term there, I cannot imagine that folks like Secretary of State Blinken would be seeking Rodman’s intervention here.  Perhaps what Rodman means here is that he applied for a visa to travel to Russia, and he just got that visa granted by one of the Russian facilities here in the US – – but if so, that is an unusual phraseology.  Then again, we are talking about Dennis Rodman here so “unusual” is not out of the question…

One other strange comment by Rodman was noted in the report.  He said that he has had more interactions with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but that he knows President Putin “too well”.  No way I am going to try to deduce what that could mean…

Obviously, I hope someone can find an expeditious way to effect Brittney Griner’s release from a 9.5-year sentence in a Russian Labor Camp for what can only be described as a minor infraction of Russian law.  If Dennis Rodman can do that by greasing the skids with some autographed game-worn NBA paraphernalia, good on him!

Over the weekend, another headline caught my attention.  It said that Chad Brown had been arrested in a potential domestic violence situation.  My first thought was that “Chad Brown” was the former Steeler’s linebacker but the first paragraph of the story following the headline made it clear that this was Chad Brown the horse trainer whose horse, Early Voting, had won the Preakness Stakes a few months ago.  I mention this only because of the charge leveled in his arrest.  Police in Saratoga Springs, NY charged Brown with “criminal obstruction of breathing”.  Where I grew up, that was generally referred to as “choking”…

If those two reports do not have you shaking your head in bewilderment this morning, let me add a third one to the pile.  Here is the headline and here is a link to the full article:

“Rutgers Athletics spends more than $450,000 on DoorDash in past year, ongoing reporting finds”

I know that I am a troglodyte, and I am no longer shamed to admit it.  I have never used DoorDash or any other food delivery service in my life; therefore, I have exactly no idea how much it costs for them to pick up some food somewhere and bring it to my doorstep.  Nevertheless…

According to the report here, one of the “perks” afforded to the Rutgers’ football team over the past year was free DoorDash deliveries; the players could order, and the school would pay for it.  However, in a one-year timespan, it seems that players availed themselves of the service “approximately” 19,745 times.  That number was staggering to me for a couple of reasons, so I went to Google and found that the 2021 Rutgers football roster had 131 players listed.  Let me do some math here:

• 19,745 delivery requests divided among 131 player means  the “average player” ordered a delivery 151 times in a one-year period.  That comes to about three times per week per player…
• 19,745 delivery orders costing $450,000 means the average order was just under $23.  That does not seem like the cost of a delivered dinner for a college football player and is even more disturbing when you consider this line from the report:

“A review of receipts found that football players placed lavish orders from Outback Steakhouse and Red Lobster, plus pizza, tacos, chicken wings and Chinese food, oftentimes from restaurants near their hometowns across the U.S. — not near the Rutgers campus.

“In one case, a player placed orders a thousand miles apart on the same day, in Florida and New York — and then continued to make orders in Florida for two more days,” the Bergen Record found.”

Rutgers is a state university; it appears that the Athletic Department is running at a deficit per this report and others; that means the DoorDash bill for the football team was underwritten in large measure by the taxpayers in the State of New Jersey.  Given the amount of – or lack of – oversight on expenditures in this case, it is not all that surprising for me to find that an entity known as the Tax Foundation has calculated that the State and Local Tax burden in New Jersey is the fifth highest of any of the 50 States.

Finally, here is an item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“Magnus Carlsen, Norway’s five-time world chess champion, announced he will not defend his title but denied he is retiring.

“What, are the Saudis going to bankroll a LIV Chess Tour too?”

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