John Sterling died yesterday at the age of 87. He was the iconic radio voice of the NY Yankees for 36 seasons and at one point in his career, he broadcast 5060 regular season games plus 211 playoff games in a row without missing a single one. His voice and his calls were known all over the baseball world. It would seem appropriate to observe here that:
- ThePearllllllllyGaaates swung open yesterday. The PearlllllyGaaates …
Rest in peace, John Sterling.
A news item from a couple of weeks ago demonstrates one of the downsides of NIL money in college athletics. With payments needed to maintain competitiveness in the revenue sports, colleges cannot spend those same dollars twice to fund non-revenue sports. That reality is the Economics equivalent of the Law of Conservation of Matter that everyone studied in their eighth-grade science classes. And that reality caused the University of Arkansas to eliminate its men’s and women’s tennis teams.
Reports based on press releases by the University said that the two tennis teams spent $2.5M in 2024/2025 and created revenue of $3,284. Even if the cynic in you believes that those numbers have been stretched to justify the decision, I would suggest that the tennis team generated red ink not black ink for the school last year. If I had to guess, I would think that the $2.5M cost was largely due to travel expenses for the team and given the minimal revenue generated, I wonder why the school even bothered to issue and sell tickets to its tennis matches.
Do not misunderstand here; I am not arguing for the elimination of NIL money in college athletics; I support that concept. What is important to recognize at the same time is that making fundamental changes in the way college athletics had been run for decades will cause ripple effects throughout the structure and many of those ripple effects were not quantifiable at the outset. I will not be surprised to see other non-revenue sports suffer economic fatalities at major universities that need to remain economically competitive in the large revenue sports.
As an example, consider Mississippi State; as of this morning, the athletics website shows only 6 men’s sports at the school – – baseball, basketball, football, golf, tennis and track and field. There are eight women’s sports because Title IX requires “equality” between men’s and women’s athletics and none of the women’s teams comes close to the roster size of the football team.
When the announcement of the dissolution of the two tennis teams came, there was the obligatory rhetoric from the AD at Arkansas about how painful the decision was:
“After considerable reflection and thoughtful discussion, we have made the very difficult decision to discontinue our men’s and women’s tennis programs. We understand the disappointment and emotion this news will bring to many. The landscape of college athletics continues to evolve, requiring us to make challenging choices as we balance competitive opportunities, resources and the long-term sustainability of our department. Ultimately, we concluded that we are unable to provide the level of support necessary for our tennis programs to consistently compete in the SEC and nationally at the standard our student-athletes, coaches, alumni and supporters deserve. We appreciate the efforts of Coach Udwadia and Coach Clary, along with all of our current and former student-athletes.”
All I can say is that if the programs only generated about $3K in revenue, he “disappointment and emotion” that this news will bring is not to very many folks at all.
Moving on … The MLB news of the day is that Tigers’ pitcher, Tarik Skubal will go on the IL and undergo a “procedure” to remove “loose bodies” from his elbow. The expectation is that he could be back in the Tigers’ rotation by mid-July. This is not a trivial matter; Skubal has won the AL Cy Young Award in each of the two previous seasons. Right now, the Tigers are in the midst of a tight race in the AL Central; they will need to hold on by their fingernails and hope that Skubal returns to the lineup and to his previous performance level ASAP.
On the assumption that Skubal’s absence for about 10 weeks makes him a longshot to win the Cy Young Award for a third straight year, there is an interesting possibility here. Jacob deGrom (Texas Rangers) has two Cy Young Awards in the NL. He is coming off Tommy John surgery and will turn 38 years old in mid-June. However, his stats so far in this young season are significant:
- His record is 2-1 with an ERA of 2.01.
- In 31.1 innings, he has 40 strikeouts and only 7 walks
- His WHIP is 0.96
Finally, this economics lesson from Steven Wright:
“If it’s a penny for your thoughts and then you put your two cents in, somebody somewhere is making a penny.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
Here I thought that Rays’ Shane McClanahan (3 – 2, 3.10 ERA, 29 innings pitched, 30 strikeouts) was having a great year.
Re; Sterling
“He is high…. he is far…. he is GONE!!!!’
can be noted, that while is is older, deGrom doesn’t have as many miles on his arm as most pitchers…. he had Tommy John in the minors of the Mets organization, so a couple lost years, and he was a shortstop until college