Victor Wembanyama has not been able to turn the San Antonio Spurs into a dominant team all by himself, but he has shown anyone who has watched him play that his talents go well beyond his just being “a tall guy”. Earlier this week, he recorded a triple-double the hard way:
- 27 points
- 14 rebounds
- 10 blocked shots
Please remember that Wembanyama just turned 20 years old on Jan 4, 2024. He is going to be “scary good” for a long time.
Another young athlete saw his fortune and his future take a much more negative turn this week. Mitchell Trubisky is only 29 years old and as an overall #2w pick in the NFL Draft, one might expect that he was entering the prime of his career. Such has not been the case. In his second year with the Bears, Trubisky started 14 games and the Bears went 11-3. That was in 2018 and it was the high-water mark for his career.
The Bears did not pick up his fifth-year contract option and Trubisky signed on with the Bills on a one-year deal. He made cameo appearances for the Bills in 2021 and then moved on to the Steelers in 2022 as the presumed successor to Ben Roethlisberger. That did not work out; he was replaced by rookie Kenny Pickett and then in 2023 he lost the backup QB job to Mason Rudolph. This week, the Steelers released Mitchell Trubisky. There are at least 10 NFL teams that can legitimately be expected to try to upgrade themselves at the QB position. I wonder if any of them will take a serious look at Mitchell Trubisky.
Moving on … According to an AP report, ESPN and the CFP have reached an agreement that will allow ESPN to retain the TV rights to the new and expanded 12-team College Football Playoff through the end of the 2031 season. The cost to ESPN will be $1.3B annually over the course of the six-year extension of those TV rights. The current deal between ESPN and the CFP is for $608M annually but only includes 3 playoff games and four of the major bowl games. The new deal is expected to cover the 11 playoff games along with those same four major bowl games.
Sticking with college football for a moment, I said last week that there were persistent rumors that Chip Kelly was looking to leave the head coaching job at UCLA and had his eye on an NFL job as an offensive coordinator. Well, that did not materialize … but Kelly did indeed leave the UCLA job and took an offensive coordinator position at Ohio St. and not in the NFL. It does not happen often that a head coach leaves his position voluntarily to take a job as a coordinator at the same level of football, and there is another aspect to this switch.
- When Chip Kelly was the offensive coordinator at New Hampshire, Ryan Day was his QB.
- When Kelly was the head coach of the Eagles, Ryan Day was his QB coach and when Kelly went to the Niners, he took Day with him as the QB coach there.
Switching gears … The college basketball season now can take center stage in terms of focus and interest as teams are jockeying for position in order to get an invitation to March Madness. There is no single dominant team this year that is threatening to go undefeated; the best record for a team in the Top 25 currently is 22-2 (UConn and Purdue). In the Top 10, there is a team with 6 losses (Tennessee) and in the Top 25, there is a team with 8 losses (Wisconsin). This could make for a very interesting NCAA basketball tournament next month.
Next up … The numbers are in; this last Super Bowl game was the “biggest” one in history in several dimensions.
- The TV audience averaged 123.4 million viewers; the previous high average viewership was 115.1 million viewers last year. That is a 7.2% increase in a year-over-year comparison.
- The folks who make these measurements say that 202.4 million viewers were tuned into the game over all the various platforms at some point in the game. Last year that total audience figure was 184 million viewers, so the total audience exposure grew by 10% this year.
- The sportsbook handle in Las Vegas also set a record. The Nevada Gaming Control Board said the handle for this year’s game was $185.6M beating the previous high of $179.8M back in 2022.
The Gaming Control Board also said that the sportsbooks won an average of 3.7% this year which is a low percentage for the sportsbooks. What cost the sportsbooks their edge were two wagers that were popular with bettors, and both hit:
- Bettors took an average of 9-1 odds that the game would go into overtime. When that happened, the sportsbooks were on the hook for some sizeable losses.
- Also, the Chiefs were underdogs in the game but according to the Gaming Control Board, 71% of the money bet against the spread was bet on the Chiefs plus the points.
Finally, an observation by author, Margaret Halsey:
“The English never smash in a face. They merely refrain from asking it to dinner.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………