Month: July 2025

Back in the Spring, Shannon Sharpe took a leave of absence from ESPN when he was charged with rape by his ex-girlfriend.  Sharpe denied the accusation and said he was going off the air to focus on defending himself in the matter.  The plaintiff here sought $50M from Sharpe for “pain and suffering, psychological and emotional distress, mental anguish, embarrassment and humiliation.”  [Aside:  You have to hand it to her lawyer for touching all the bases there,]  Sharpe and his lawyer labeled all of this as a “shakedown”  saying the relationship was consensual.  [Aside:  No surprise there.]

When he stepped back from ESPN in the Spring, Sharpe said he would return when NFL Training camps convened and that appeared to be on track as of a couple of weeks ago when the lawsuit was settled.  Some reports said that the settlement fee was $23M; I have not seen any links to anything that would be proof-positive of that dollar amount.  Given that the woman was asking for $50M in the first place, that does not seem to me to be an outrageous settlement figure.  The suit was “dismissed with prejudice” meaning that it cannot be reinstated in the future.  So, with NFL Training Camps about to open, Sharpe would seem to have been “rested and ready” for a return to ESPN programming.

Things took a turn this week, however.  ESPN decided to walk away from Shannon Sharpe.  I have not found a statement from ESPN explaining this decision which is interesting in that generic statements from the “firing entity” are usually at the ready when the separation in question becomes public.  I have no inside information here, but something tells me that this story has not run its course just yet…

Moving on …  Another retired athlete finds himself in an unusual circumstance this morning.  Gilbert Arenas was arrested yesterday on Federal charges of illegal gambling.  Prosecutors say that Arenas ran an “illegal gambling operation”; Arenas posted $50K bond and was released this morning.  Here is a rough outline of the charges:

• Arenas and several others supposedly rented out a mansion Arenas owned in California “to hold high-stakes card games from September 2021 to July 2022.”
• Arenas allegedly hired someone to “help him stage the place for games and to collect rent.”
• Arenas and his cohorts allegedly “hired women to serve the gamblers and added a staff of chefs and security guards” to give the games a luxurious air.
• Arenas and the others made their money from the rent plus a rake of every pot from every hand in the high-stakes games.

The trial date for this event is set for September 23.  Upon his release this morning, Arenas appeared to be happy and said, “They can’t hold me.”  This one might turn out to be fun to watch …

Switching gears …  The Phillies and the Twins executed a trade yesterday giving the Phillies a much-needed closer out of the bullpen and giving the Twins two solid prospects.  It appears to be beneficial to both sides when viewed from different time perspectives.  The Phillies have struggled with their bullpen this season; their projected closer – – Jose Alvarado is currently serving an 80-game suspension levied by MLB for testing positive for “exogenous testosterone”.  Alvarado was suspended on May 18, 2025, when the Phillies had a record of 28-28.  That means that Alvarado will be eligible to return to the team for the stretch run.  And to get to that point, the Phillies acquired Jhoan Duran yesterday.

Duran is 27 years old and is “under team control” for two seasons.  His career ERA is 2.47 and he has saved 16 games for the Twins so far in 2025.  He has recorded 53 strikeouts in 2025 in 49.1 innings pitched.  He was one of the top relief pitchers on the “available list” for this year.  Importantly, Duran is right-handed; that is noteworthy because Alvardo is left-handed.  Should Alvarado return to the team at a performance level the team anticipated, that would give the team a potent pair of relief options for this year’s post-season.  [Aside:  The Phillies have not clinched a playoff spot for 2025, but they are in good position to participate in October.]

Finally, the Gilbert Arenas/gambling issue mentioned above leads to these observations about gambling:

“Gambling has brought our family together. We had to move to a smaller house.”  [Tommy Cooper]

And …

“Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing for something.”  [Wilson Mizner]

And …

“Part of the $10 million I spent on gambling, part on booze and part on women. The rest I spent foolishly.”  [George Raft]

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

 

 

There is a long history of US Presidents’ involvement with sports.  A curmudgeon would say that interest/involvement was politically motivated to curry favor with the electorate; a kinder and gentler interpretation might be that – – like many Americans – – US Presidents have been sports fans in addition to whatever their public personas may have been.  Let me hit a few of the high notes here:

• Woodrow Wilson:  A big baseball fan and a collegiate player, he attended a World Series game in 1915 and threw out the first pitch.  He was the first sitting President to attend a World Series game.
• Calvin Coolidge:  He attended Game 1 of the 1924 World Series
• FDR:  He threw out the first pitch on Opening Day 8 times in his tenure in the White House.  Also, he famously gave MLB the “green light” to continue to play in the spring of 1942 after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
• Dwight Eisenhower:  He made golf a much bigger thing that it was due to his interest in playing the game
• Richard Nixon:  He once drew up an offensive football play for George Allen – – then coach of the Washington Redskins.  Allen actually ran the play and it lost yardage; he never tried again.  Amazingly, it never caught on with other NFL teams either.
• Gerald Ford:  He played varsity football at Michigan as a linebacker and offensive lineman.  LBJ once denigrated ford saying that Ford had played too many games without a helmet.
• George H. W. Bush:  He played varsity baseball at Yale.
• George W, Bush:  He threw out the first pitch when MLB returned after the 9/11 attacks.
• Barack Obama:  He “released” his personal bracket picks for March Madness every year.
• Donald Trump:  He owned a franchise in the USFL.  He tried to buy the Buffalo Bills in the NFL.  He had a prominent role in a storyline for pro ‘rassling.  He is an avid golfer.

            That listing merely skims the surface; nothing there would attract the attention of anyone associated with the American Historical Association.  Moreover, if the interests and exploits of President Trump ended with the notations above, I doubt that the entire listing would ever have appeared here or anywhere else.  Such is not the case and as Cher once sang:

“And the beat goes on …”

There are three sports issues into which President Trump has inserted himself.  Please do not ask me to explain why this is the case; I do not read minds and if I were ever to achieve such a capability, let me be sure to say now that the last folks I would use my newfound skills on would be the current senior members of the Executive Branch and/or any member of the US Congress.  And yet, here we go:

• Transgender athletes:  I happen to agree with President Trump on this one; I think it is unfair competition for a post-pubescent male to compete against women in sports where strength, speed and endurance are critical elements for success.  Proving that to be the case is the creation of women’s sports in the first place; if the playing field were level, women could participate in Varsity Sports and there would not have ever been a need to put a gender label on women’s sports in the first place.
• Staging a UFC event on the White House Lawn:  That is a bad idea no matter when you put on the spectacle but to do it on July 4^th, 2026 – – the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence – – takes the cheesiness of the idea to stratospheric levels.  Yes, I remember JFK playing touch football on the White House Lawn and yes, I remember Ike had a putting green installed on the White House lawn and two par-3 holes introduced to Camp David.  Nevertheless, a UFC fight card with a large number of well-oiled hooligans-in-waiting on the White House lawn is clearly different.
• Signing an Executive Order to “clarify” college athletes’ employment status:  Look, the “Transgender Issue” is a real one and it falls in President’ Trump’s wheelhouse; even if you do not agree with his position, you must admit that his involvement there makes a bit of sense.  The UFC fight on White House property achieves an exponential level of cheesiness, but maybe you can attribute that to his proclivity to hob-knob with successful billionaire bros.  But this one is a social tar baby [Hat Tip to Joel Chandler Harris and the Uncle Remus Tales]

I make no claim to be an attorney nor a political scientist or political guru.  And I really don’t think that the rest of my days on this planet are going to be affected materially by whatever the final shakeout might be regarding paying college athletes and their employment status.  So, my fundamentally uninformed and only marginally interested perspective on the Executive Order is here:

• The NCAA student-athlete who competes only for the love of the sport on his way to a degree became sufficiently threadbare that the NCAA had to approve NIL payments.  That set up a suit by college athletes who toiled in the years before the NCAA’s altered posture claiming that they missed out on earnings potential.  That suit settled for $2.8B.  Those are facts; so, what does the Executive Order need to do here?
• The Order directs the Secretary of Labor and the NLRB to “clarify the employment status of student athletes.”  Are they employees of the schools or conferences?  Are they independent contractors?  Can they unionize?  Maybe I need to go back and review my notes from civics class in high school, but those questions seem to me to be in the purview of the Congress and not the President.
• The Order directs the Attorney General and the Chairman of the FTC to direct the NCAA into ways that the NCAA can regain its rule-making authority regarding intercollegiate athletics.  I’m sorry; I don’t understand how they might do that or why that might be a giant leap forward.  The NCAA hardly brings a long history of meaningful rulemaking to the party.
• The so-called “Olympic sports” and most women’s sports get protection from the Order which calls for set-asides for scholarships in those sports.

Look, I don’t know nearly enough to say here that the Executive Order should have said this or that something that it did say was patently counterproductive or even unconstitutional.  But I think I know enough to believe that the President of the United States and his White House team of advisors and supporters all have much more important things to do than to worry about college athletes getting paid for their efforts.  Hey, even starting the planning to protect the White House and the grounds from being trashed by the UFC crowd on July 4, 2026, is a bigger deal than that.

Finally, this comment from comedian Hugh Dennis seems appropriate today:

“I’m constantly looking for humour in the news. The funniest things are in the minutiae.”

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

 

 

Ryne Sandberg died yesterday at the age of 65; the reported cause of death was metastatic prostate cancer.  Sandberg is in the Hall of Fame and was the face of the franchise for the Chicago Cubs from the mid-80s through the mid-90s.  In that era of baseball, most second-baseman were of the “slick fielder/light hitter” variety; Sandberg was different.

• He led the league in home runs in 1990.
• His career OPS was .796.
• He scored 100+ runs in 7 different seasons.
• He led the league in runs scored 3 times.

Do not mistake those offensive stats to mean that Sandberg was deficient in the field.  He won 9 Gold Gloves in his 15-year stay with the Cubs and was selected for the All-Star team 10 times.

He was not a product of the Cubs’ farm system; the team acquired him in one of the more lopsided trades ever.  In 1982, the Phillies wanted a change at the shortstop position and arranged with the Cubs to send SS Larry Bowa to the Cubs for SS Ivan DeJesus.  At best for the Phillies, that might have been construed as an “even swap”, but the Cubs cajoled the Phillies’ brass to throw in a 21-year-old second baseman whose major league credentials at the time included all of 6 plate appearances and a batting average of .167.   And that is how Ryne Sandberg came to be a Chicago Cub until his retirement after the 1997 season.

Rest in peace, Ryne Sandberg.

Moving on …  In case you had not paid attention to NBA business news recently, Amazon Prime Video and the NBA reached an 11-year deal for Prime Video to televise 66 NBA games per season.  That deal will include:

• Double headers on Opening Week and on Thursdays/Fridays during the regular season.
• “Select Saturday afternoon games”  [Aside:  Translation TBD]
• A special “Black Friday Game”.  [Meh!  I’ll watch the NFL thanks.]

In addition to that commitment, Prime Video will also televise:

• All games in the knockout rounds of the NBA Cup.  [Ho-hum!]
• All games in the play-in tournament.  [Insignificant – – but potentially interesting]
• Games from the first and second rounds of the playoffs.  [I’m listening …]
• Conference Finals games in 6 of the 11 seasons in the contract  [I’m there.]
• Some WNBA games too.

With that commitment to telecasting basketball games, Amazon Prime Video needed to  go out and hire some announcers for games and for some studio/commentary shows that will complement those games.  Obviously, their plan was not to find unknown talent and hand the keys over to them; Prime Video went for lots of experience.  I have not seen the announcer pairings yet, but here are some of the hiring decisions by Prive Video:

• Play-by-play:  Ian Eagle, Michael Grady, Kevin Harlan.
• Analysts:  Brent Barry, Dell Curry, Blake Griffin, Udonis Haslem, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Candace Parker, Stan Van Gundy and Dwayne Wade.

That is a potent line-up.  Ian Eagle and Kevin Harlan have done a ton of basketball telecasts and are at the top tier of their profession.  The analysts are far less experienced, but Barry, Nash and Van Gundy bring coaching experience to the microphone and Parker has done excellent work in the studio for March Madness programs for the past several seasons.

Meanwhile, NBC also has part of the NBA TV action and NBC is going to offer a studio show that might be great or it might become known as “The Hiroshima” of sports studio shows.  Carmelo Anthony and Vince Carter will be the regular experts in this production, and they will be joined aperiodically by a “Special Contributor” you may have heard of:

• Michael Jeffrey Jordan.

Finally, this from former NBA coach, Phil Jackson:

“Basketball is a simple game. Your goal is penetration, get the ball close to the basket, and there are three ways to do that. Pass, dribble and offensive rebound.”

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

 

 

I did not watch the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony live yesterday, but I have seen video clips of many of the speeches.  I very much enjoyed seeing Ichiro’s presentation.  There was a time about 20 years ago where I said here that going to see the Mariners play was a treat because it allowed me to see Ichiro’s focus on the game and  his “routine” to participate in that game.  Ichiro is not the best player I ever saw, but I found him to be the most compelling player to watch even when he was in the dugout.

You can go to baseball-reference.com and see every nuance of Ichiro’s stats; I will not dwell on all of them here, but Ichiro is a well-deserved first round inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  He did not arrive in Seattle until he was 27 years old, but he brought with him a résumé that included 7 consecutive batting titles from the Japanese League.  Surely, that was not going to carry over into MLB; Ichiro was too skinny and too much of a “slap-hitter” to survive in big league waters.  Boy, was that reasoning off kilter…

Ichiro is the first Asian player to make it to the Hall of Fame; he will not be the last.  But as others join him there, don’t let some of Ichiro’s accomplishments dim in your memory.

• In 2004, Ichiro recorded 262 base hits.  That is a bit more than 3 hits every 2 games for the duration of the regular season.  That  year, he broke George Sisler’s record of 257 hits in a single season – – a record that had stood for 84 years.
• In his rookie year, Ichiro won the Rookie of the Year Award AND he won the MVP Award too.  Only one other player, Fred Lynn, has ever done that.

Listening to some of Ichiro’s remarks yesterday made me think that one day Shohei Ohtani will be in the same position addressing an audience.  And that got me thinking about active players who could make the Hall of Fame ceremony somewhere down the line.  Here is an off-the-top-of my-head list; I did not go through team rosters to compile this list, so there are surely omissions that would be corrected if I did more homework here.  These seven players look like shoo-ins to me:

1. Freddie Freeman
2. Bryce Harper
3. Aaron Judge
4. Clayton Kershaw
5. Shohei Ohtani
6. Max Scherzer
7. Mike Trout

Here are five players who came to mind who could make it to the Hall but are not lead-pipe-cinches:

1. Ronald Acuna, Jr. – – if he can avoid more injuries
2. Jose Altuve
3. Mookie Betts
4. Manny Machado
5. Chris Sale

Switching gears but staying with baseball … Last week, Kyle Schwarber got the 1000^th hit of his career and it was a home run.  In his career at that time, he had hit 319 home runs which means his “home run percentage” relative to his base hits is .319.  That seemed to be awfully high, so I decided to check up on the “home run kings” of baseball to see what their “home run percentages” were:

• Henry Aaron = .200
• Barry Bonds = .260
• Ken Griffey, Jr. = .227
• Willie Mays = .200
• Albert Pujols = .208
• Babe Ruth = .249
• Mike Schmidt = .245
• Jim Thome = .263

Finally, since today has been about baseball, I’ll close with this from “Mr. Baseball” – – Bob Uecker:

“The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game. He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parents were throwing things at our car and swearing at us as we drove off. Gosh, I was proud.”

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

 

 

Hulk Hogan died this week at the age of 71; the cause of death was reported as cardiac arrest.  For about 20 years, he was the face of professional wrestling in the US; it was at the beginning of his ascendancy to that status that I lost interest in “rassling so I have no vivid memories related to his in-ring exploits.  However, he maintained sufficient celebrity cred to be a recognizable figure for almost 50 years.

I had one chance encounter with Hulk Hogan.  Back when I and a group of friends took our annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas, we happened to be there on the same weekend as a ‘rassling spectacular.  It was late on Friday night – – at least midnite and probably closer to 1:00 AM – – when I was at a blackjack table in the now defunct Imperial Palace casino.  Hulk Hogan walked in with two bodyguards; Hogan was a large individual; both bodyguards were even larger.  He walked right by my blackjack table, and I could have reached out and touched him – – but the presence of those two bodyguards convinced me not to do that.

Rest in peace, Hulk Hogan.

Moving on …  When it comes to the major sports in the US, the books are closed, and the IRS does not reveal the filings of the various teams demonstrating the degree of profit/loss or the major contributors to the profit or loss status.  There is one exception, however, in the NFL and that is the Green Bay Packers.  The Packers are a publicly owned team and as a publicly owned team, they are required to open their books the same way that Microsoft or Apple or Exxon or General Forge and Foundry [Hat Tip to Kurt Vonnegut]  are required to do so.

Since the NFL shares “national revenues” – – mainly revenue from network TV rights – – you can take the Packers’ reporting and do some math and arrive at the league’s national revenue as a whole.  The teams just received a payment from the league office for $432.6M as their share of national revenues for fiscal year 2024.  Since there are 32 teams, that means the national revenues for last fiscal year were at least $13.84B.

• [Aside: I say “at least” here because I do not know if the teams get all the revenue distributed and then cough up some of it to keep the Front Office afloat or if the Front Office takes a piece off the top.]

“National revenues” are the driver for the calculation of the salary cap; the players will share a little less than half of those revenues with the owners as their salaries and bonuses are prescribed in their contracts.  “National revenues” do not include local incomes like tickets sold or radio broadcast rights for games or parking or a share of the concessions revenue or stadium naming rights with a local credit union or – – you get the idea.

The NFL salary cap for 2024 was $255.4M.  So, let’s do a little estimating:

• Team expenses = Players’ salaries + Coaches’ salaries + staff salaries + facilities costs + Travel
• Total revenue = National revenue + Local revenue.

We don’t know all the entries in those equations above, but we do know that national revenues minus player salaries are about $177M  We also know from the Packers’ public accounting that the Packers showed a profit of $83.7M.  So, it would appear from those numbers that the Packers’ “local revenues” covered all the expenses save for the players’ salaries and the difference between the national revenues and the players’ salaries approximates the net profit for the squad.

Obviously, local revenues and team expenses vary from team to team, but this reporting opens the door just a crack into the workings of NFL team finances.  The bottom line here is that it would take a calamitous set of events for an NFL team to lose money from franchise operations in a given fiscal  year.

Next up … The Baltimore Orioles may be the most disappointing team in MLB this year given the expectations that their young players would all improve this year, and the team would be a serious threat come playoff time.  Not happening!  The O’s are dead last in the AL East and their record resembles that of the A’s and/or the White Sox more closely than it does the records of the Jays or the Tigers or the Astros.  Nevertheless, Orioles fans can still enjoy a culinary monstrosity at Camden Yards to take their mind off the play on the field.  Here is the Warehouse Burger:

• Two beef patties – – 1/3 pound each
• Queso
• Pico de gallo
• Fried onions
• Pretzel bun.

That sounds as if it would take two beers to wash it down.

Finally,  I’ll close the week with this from the “Bard of Baltimore” – – my favorite curmudgeon – – H. L. Mencken:

“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.”

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

 

 

About a week ago, there were reports that the sale of the Tampa Bay Rays might close as soon as September of this year.  Now there are reports that the Twins are also for sale and that there could be action on that front in the near future.  The Twins’ owners – the Pohlad family – said last Fall that they would be interested in selling the team.  There were negotiations with Justin Ishbia as a potential buyer, but that activity went by the wayside when Ishbia increased his minority ownership of the White Sox and took an option to buy out Jerry Reinsdorf’s controlling interest in the White Sox somewhere in the future.

• [Aside:  Justin Ishbia is the brother of Mat Ishbia who is the owner of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns.]

Nonetheless, MLB Commissioner, Rob Manfred, had a press event last week and said this regarding the Twins’ situation:

“I can tell you with a lot of confidence that there will be a transaction there, and it will be consistent with the kind of pricing that has taken place. There will be a transaction. We just need to be patient while they rework.”

The phrase “consistent with the kind of pricing that has taken place” probably refers to the Rays’ reported price of $1.7B and/or the $2B evaluation of the White Sox implied by Justin Ishbia’s recent buy-in to the club.  It could also refer to the sale of the Orioles last year, which had a closing value reported to be $1.725B.  Manfred did not hint at who is sitting on the other end of the negotiations with the Twins’ current owners and I have not found any rumors on that subject by anyone with reasonable baseball reporting credentials.

Moving on …  As the NFL teams begin to report to Training Camp, the order of the day here in Curmudgeon Central is to start to think about the NFL regular season in broad strokes.  Where are the interesting focal points going to be in 2025.  My first level ruminations lead me to think that there are three of the eight divisions that could be more interesting than the others and here is my synoptic view as of the start of Training Camp”

1. AFC West:  The Chiefs have won this division 9 consecutive times; I am not sure they are the best team in the division for 2025.  I think the Chargers are as good and maybe better; I think the Broncos are clearly on an upward trajectory and I think the Raiders will be better in 2025 than they were last year even though I don’t see the Raiders as a playoff team.  I don’t think the Chiefs are going to collapse and contend for the overall #1 pick in next  year’s Draft, but I wonder if they can defy the “Super Bowl loser jinx” and win the division for the 10^th  season in a row.  I have my eyes on the Chargers.
2.  NFC East:  I expect both the Eagles and the Commanders to take a step back this year.  Saquon Barkley is not going to rush for 2000 yards again in 2025 and the Commanders are not going to go 8-1 in one-score games again in 2025.  Neither team will implode, but they are not going to run away with the division because I think the Cowboys’ offense will be significantly better this year than last year.  The Giants are going to improve a bit too simply because Russell Wilson will be a better QB than any of the Giants’ starters from last year – – Daniel Jones, Drew Lock and/or Tommy “Cutlets” DeVito.
3. NFC North:  Last year, this division had three excellent teams and one also-ran.  The Lions won the division and then lost both their offensive and defensive coordinators to head coaching jobs.  When that happened to the Eagles recently, they went from a Super Bowl level team to a wild card team that exited the playoffs unceremoniously.  Oh, and the Lions’ offensive coordinator from last year now coaches the division also-ran.  The Vikes were also excellent last year, and they lost the QB that took them to the playoffs with a 14-3 record.  Sam Darnold will ply his trade in Seattle this year and the Vikes will go with rookie JJ McCarthy  under center.  The only team without some sort of major change is the Packers, and so …?

Finally, I’ll close today with this observation by Will Rogers:

“The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.”

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

 

 

It is a rare occasion in this little backwater of the Internet for the lead topic to be anything related to the WNBA.  Today, the first two items are about the WNBA and that would be extremely unusual.  Here goes …

The WNBA just concluded its All-Star break/game; the game drew a TV audience of 2.2 million viewers which is about half the number of folks who tuned into se the NBA All-Star Game about 6 months ago.  The league is and should be happy with that audience.  I did not watch the All-Star Game because I don’t like All-Star Games and because I am only marginally interested in the WNBA.  However, I did notice something when checking in on the reporting surrounding the game:

• WNBA players are very much like NBA players; they don’t care much about their All-Star Game to exert effort to play defense.

The final score this year was 151-131; total number of points = 282.  For the record, the WNBA record for most total points in a regular season game is 221 points back in 2018.  The All-Star Exhibition eclipsed that standard that has stood for 7 years by 61 points.  Good defense, ladies …

[Aside:  The WNBA games are 40 minutes long compared to NBA games which are 48 minutes long.  Hence the reason the women’s records for total points are significantly behind the men’s record.]

And, there was something else that emanated from the All-Star break that deserves discussion.  The league and the women need to forge a new CBA because the women opted out of the current one and it will expire at the end of this year’s WNBA playoffs.  The women chose the All-Star Game to make a statement about those negotiations by wearing warm  up shirts that read:

“Pay Us What You Owe Us”

This is not going to be a popular comment, but it is the truth.  The moment I saw photos of the women warming up in those shirts, the thing that flashed into my mind was:

• Colin Kaepernick

Hear me out,  When Colin Kaepernick famously “took a knee” to bring attention to/protest police brutality/systemic racism in society, I completely agreed with him on the issues that he was protesting.  I also said then – – and continue to think now – – that he chose a wrong format for demonstrating his protest.  He chose to do something that made him stand out and be noticed (good move) by doing something that was guaranteed to piss off a very large segment of the audience he was demonstrating in front of (bad move).

I am now in the same situation with the players in the WNBA.  They were right to opt out of the current CBA because reports I have read say that the players now get as part of their salary cap calculations only 9% of the league’s national revenue.  Forget the fact that the NBA players get 50% of the NBA’s national revenue and forget arguments about parity; the current level of 9% is not even a token recognition of the value of the players on the court.  I am foursquare aligned with the players in terms of making more money available to them in a salary cap structure.

But let me be equally clear about three other things:

1. The players are not “owed” anything.  They have earned an increase in their share of the revenues and need to acquire that increase, but no one owes them anything.
2. If the players insist on presenting themselves as litigants demanding what they are “owed”, are they ready to share their newfound riches with the women who played in the WNBA 25 years ago keeping the league only slightly below water so that it could survive  until the current women arose to claim what they are “owed”?
3. The fact is that the WNBA has been a money-losing proposition for about 30 years now and it has kept body and soul together based on the largesse of the NBA owners and Commissioners.  If anyone or any group is “owed” anything, it would be the NBA owners who paid the bills so that the lights stayed on.  I will not hold my breath waiting for one of the women to acknowledge that “inconvenient truth”.

Finally, here is a comment from WNBA star player, Sue Bird, which was surely prescient:

“We’re going to have a moment. It’s coming; just that breakthrough that’s going to give us a cool factor, and more people will want to be a part of it. Because that, to me, is the only thing we’re lacking – that social thing: ‘It’s cool to go to a WNBA game.’ “

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

 

 

Over the weekend, the US has been consumed with the fall from grace of the tech CEO who got caught on a Kiss Cam at a Coldplay concert canoodling with the HR Director of his company.  Video of that event went viral, and the CEO resigned posthaste.  Personally, I think it was less important that he and the HR Director were dallying than it was that they chose to go to a Coldplay concert “on a date” – – but that’s just me.

There was another fall from grace and summary resignation recently in the sports world.  Late last week, Lloyd Howell, Jr., resigned as the Executive Director of the NFLPA.  Soon on the heels of that announced departure, The Athletic reported that the union had hired “an investigator” who  uncovered “documents showing Howell had charged the union for expenses involving two visits to strip clubs.”  Wow!

Look, I am too lazy and insufficiently interested to go and find out the details of Lloyd Howell’s contract with the NFLPA to see what his salary was.  Given the position and its level of responsibilities, let me guess that it was more than $1M annually and leave it at that.  If one is pulling down that kind of annual income and if one wants to visit strip clubs as a form of entertainment, I have no problem with that whatsoever.  [Aside:  For the record, I have been to a strip club exactly once in my life and have no interest whatsoever in doing so again.  I am not a prude; I simply do not enjoy sex as a spectator sport.]  However, it is simply wrong to charge things like that to your employer’s expense account.

According to The Athletic:

“Howell charged $738.82 for a car service from one visit in Florida in 2023, ESPN reported, citing a receipt it obtained. Howell and two union employees also visited a strip club in Atlanta during the union’s annual summit in February, according to the expense reports obtained by ESPN. That outing involved $2,426 in charges. “

Over the last week or so, there has been a hubbub about why the union had not protested an arbitrator’s ruling on possible owners’ collusion regarding fully guaranteed contracts for star QBs after Deshaun Watson got one from the Browns.  Pablo Torre reported on the arbitrator’s findings and about the evidence presented to him and wondered how the union could have accepted the ruling as it had.  Simultaneously, folks found another arbitration ruling that went against the union after NFLPA President, JC Tretter, suggested that NFL running backs “fake injuries” to sit out practices/games to shed light on the importance of those players.  [Aside:  Reports say those statements directly violate certain sections of the CBA.  I tried to follow the logic of that reporting but the certainty of that charge is beyond my reading of the CBA.  Take that statement for what it is worth.]

So, were those two arbitration rulings handled in some sort of quid pro quo?  And if so, is that strategy beneficial to the union members as a body?  And then you add the strip club expenses on top of that speculation and Lloyd Howell said this in his farewell statement:

“It’s clear that my leadership has become a distraction to the important work the NFLPA advances every day.”

I have to wonder exactly what “important work” the NFLPA was advancing in those visits to strip clubs …

And this morning, as they say in the late-night infomercials, “But wait, there’s more …”

This morning, it was reported in the Washington Post  that JC Tretter has also stepped down from the union.  Tretter was most recently serving as the union’s “Chief Strategy Officer” and said he was leaving because he had “nothing left to give” to the union.  Let me just say that not everyone was saddened to learn of Tretter’s decision.  ESPN.com quoted former linebacker and now podcaster, Will Compton:

“We’ve gotta be the dumbest Union in all of sports.  Ya — let’s vote for the guy who was in charge of hiring Lloyd Howell. Let’s vote for the guy who swept a lot of sh*t under the rug when NFL owners were colluding to not give out guaranteed contracts. The NFLPA is constantly outmatched and it’s truly our own doing.”

So, there is going to be a major overhaul of Mahogany Row at NFLPA HQs, but the union folks might want to do a bit more analysis of their operations before letting the dust settle:

• Howell was “caught” padding the expense account based on work done by an “investigator hired by the union”.  Who figured out that was a good thing to do and what information did that part of the organization have that justified that sort of hiring?
• Are their auditors hired by the NFLPA to check the financial accounting there?  If so, what was their role in this “discovery” – – or their lack of a role?

It just seems to me that there is more activity inside the NFLPA that is not closely related to the mission of “representing the best interests of the membership” and that additional activity needs to be identified and minimized.  The Howell/Tretter situations are not nearly as salacious as the Kiss Cam exposé was but both situations indicate to me that there needs to be a greater focus on “purpose” in those organizations that seems to have prevailed in the recent past.

Finally, perhaps the best way to close today after pondering on the Kiss Cam situation and the NFLPA upheaval is to recall the words of Sir Walter Scott:

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive.”

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

 

 

As the NFL Training Camps are about to open, there are three “contract situations” afloat that need resolution.  Here is the first one:

• Most of the second-round picks from the April Draft remain unsigned.

The issue is pretty simple.  Second-round picks have slotted contract values but the amount of the contract that is guaranteed is negotiable.  The players this year want more of the contracts guaranteed than in future years and the owners have not yet met that demand.  This stalemate will be resolved because even though this crop of rookies arrives with pocketed NIL money from college days, they are not about to forgo deals worth up to eight figures with most of it guaranteed if not as much as they had hoped for.

Here is the second contract situation:

• Bengals’ first-round pick, Shemar Stewart, remains unsigned.  The issue here is NOT the money; that makes it more complicated.

Stewart was the 17^th pick in the first round back in April; the CBA says he gets a fully guaranteed contract for 4 years worth about $19M with $10.8M coming as a signing bonus.  The issue is that the Bengals want to change the contract language surrounding the means by which the salary guarantees can be voided should Stewart breach the contract.  This is not the way the Bengals have worded such contract clauses with draftees in prior years and Stewart does not think he deserves to have it in his deal either.

There are myriad ways in which a player can breach a contract; the most obvious one being that he is convicted of a felony and sentenced to jail, making him unavailable for games.  But it is not difficult to imagine other trigger events  such as:

• Suspension by the league for violation of the Substance Abuse Policy
• Suspension by the league for violation of the Personal Conduct Policy
• Suspension by the league for violation of the Gambling Policy
• Failure to show up for a game

Stewart has an interesting option available to him.  He still has college football eligibility left; in theory, he could try to go back to school – – assuming the NCAA would not declare him ineligible for hiring an agent to represent him after the NFL Draft – – and collect another year of NIL money there.  That option has several danger points:

• Suppose he gets a serious injury and is not a first round pick next year
• Suppose he has a mediocre season and is not a first round pick next year
• Suppose NFL GMs think he is a pain-in-the-ass, and he is not a first round pick next year
• Nonetheless, the option exists …

When contract negotiations are hung up over money or duration or guarantees, the path to resolution is usually obvious.  Shemar Stewart’s case is different, and it may not be easily resolved unless one of the two parties capitulates – – and that is not a good way to begin a constructive relationship.

Here is the third contract situation

• Washington Commanders’  WR, Terry McLaurin, wants a contract extension and the team has not come up with an offer that is acceptable to him.

This one has lots of dimensions.

• McLaurin is the team’s best WR
• He is an established clubhouse leader and has been since he arrived.
• He has had 100+ yards receiving for the last 5 consecutive seasons.
• He has not missed a game since 2020.
• He will make $23M in 2025 in the final  year of his last contract extension.
• He will turn 30 years old in September.

Looking at all the above, the only thing that is slightly negative is McLaurin’s age which might give the team pause when it comes to the length of the contract.  The problem is that the market price for WRs has changed significantly recently, and McLaurin’s agents obviously want him to participate in that upward momentum.  The question now is:

• How does Terry McLaurin rank in the pantheon of NFL #1 WRs?

Ja’Mar Chase got an extension worth $40M per year for 4  years.  That is the top of the market and – – good as Terry McLaurin is, he is not Ja’Mar Chase.  So, McLaurin is at $23M for this year and the top of the WR market for extensions is $40M per year.  That is a wide range for negotiations and that is probably a major sticking point in the negotiations.

The age factor is probably at work here too.  Chase is 25  years old; here are the ages for some of the #1 WRs who are comparable to Terry McLaurin:

• Marvin Harrison Jr. is 23 years old
• Amon Ra St. Brown is 25  years old
• Justin Jefferson is 26 years old
• CeeDee Lamb is 26 years old
• Brandon Aiyuk is 27  years old
• A J Brown is 28 years old
• Terry McLaurin is 30 years old.

From my perspective, the pressure here is on the Commanders to make this deal happen.  McLaurin is their best receiver, and this is the last year of his current deal.  It would not make sense for the team to let that contract expire at the end of the year and have McLaurin test the free agent market with a sour taste in his mouth for the Commanders’ Front Office.  The team does not want to lose him, and they surely do not want to lose him and get nothing back in trade.  And, if the Commanders would choose to put the franchise tag on him next year, that would mean they have to pay him about $34M with all of that counting toward the cap.  Terry McLaurin does not have a ton of leverage here, but he has more leverage than the team does.

Finally, let me close today with some  observations about negotiations:

“Successful negotiation is not about getting to ‘yes’; it’s about mastering ‘no’ and understanding what the path to an agreement is.”  [Christopher Voss]

And …

“Everything is negotiable. Whether or not the negotiation is easy is another thing.”  [Carrie Fisher]

And …

“During a negotiation, it would be wise not to take anything personally. If you leave personalities out of it, you will be able to see opportunities more objectively.”  [Brian Koslow]

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

 

 

Andrew Marchand is a renowned reporter\ who covers sports media for The Athletic.  Recently he reported on a major shake-up at FOX Sports which involves canceling three shows on FS-1 and firing Joy Taylor.  Here are the canceled shows:

1. Breakfast Ball:  Craig Carton and Mark Schlereth were the main hosts here with Danny Perkins along for the ride.  Schlereth is OK; Perkins is OK; Carton is awful.  For me, he made the program unwatchable.  Some people think he is “provocative” in his takes; I think he is merely “loud” in his takes.
2. The Facility:  This program was worse than Breakfast Ball; it featured four former NFL players who basically freestyle their way through their timeslot.  The concept here was to have four athletes give an audience the players’ point of view on topics in the sports world.  That might have worked with an experienced broadcaster acting like a point guard and setting things up for the players to give their views.  Such was not the case and far too often there were interludes of chaos on the air.
3. Speak:  This used to be called Speak for Yourself and at one time I considered it good enough to be sure to watch it about 3 or 4 days a week.

            When it was called Speak for Yourself it began as a discussion/debate program with Colin Cowherd and Jason Whitlock.  Both are given to looking at sports stories from a vantage point different from just about anyone else.  They played off each other wonderfully and when they expanded segments of the program to include others, they often added TJ Houshmanzadeh to the mix, and he was excellent.  Cowherd left the show – probably due to overwork since he also did a 3-hour radio show that ended just before Speak for Yourself aired; Cowherd was replaced by Marcellus Wiley and the show was just as good as it was before.  Wiley was more like the “straight man” for Whitlock’s “out of left field takes” and the show continued to work.

Then Jason Whitlock left FOX for other endeavors; he was replaced by Emmanuel Acho and the pairing of Wiley and Acho never achieved the on-air chemistry that Jason Whitlock had enjoyed with his two partners.  It did not take me long to go from a “three days a week viewer” to a “once every three weeks viewer”.   Then Wiley left the show and in the current incarnation as Speak, the show has Paul Pierce, Keyshaun Johnson and Joy Taylor.  According to Andrew Marchand’s reporting, Speak has “struggled to find a huge audience”.  Maybe the answer is to get Jason Whitlock and Marcellus Wiley back together on the air?

Moving on …  It appears as if things are moving swiftly regarding the sale of the Tampa Bay Rays to Patrick Zalupski – a real estate developer from Jax.  Reports say that the selling price will be $1.7B and that the deal could close as early as September of this year.  That valuation for the franchise may seem minuscule given the purchase prices for sports franchises in the news recently such as:

• Celtics – – $6B
• Lakers – – $10B.

Nevertheless, the current owner – – Stuart Sternberg – – will make a tidy profit on the deal since he bought the club for a mere $200M about 20 years ago.    Zalupski is reported to be inclined to keep the team in the Tampa area but that he prefers to have the team home field located in the Tampa area and not in the St. Petersburg area.  There had been a deal that had advanced a bit to put a new stadium in St. Petersburg about a year ago, but that deal fell apart before a shovel hit the ground.  The Rays have been actively looking for a new stadium and a new stadium site for about 20 years; maybe this new owner as a real estate developer will have better luck in getting some sort of deal done with local area politicians for a new facility.

Meanwhile, money and effort are being spent on repairing Tropicana Field, which was severely damaged by a hurricane last year, forcing the Rays to play the 2025 regular season in a spring training facility stadium in Tampa.  That seems like a waste of money and effort to me because even if the stadium is renovated, it has never been able to let the Rays draw audiences that are related to the Rays on-field success.  The new owner can only hope …

Finally, I mentioned Jason Whitlock above so let me close with this observation from him:

“It is possible to set your standards too high, which can undermine a man’s confidence and ability to perform. Instead of reaching for the stars and settling for the moon, there is considerable evidence that man is better served reaching for a blade of grass and settling for an under-the-table handshake deal.”

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