An Outbreak Of Tone Deafness …

Yesterday, I mentioned that former Raiders’ WR, Henry Ruggs III, was sentenced to jail for 3-10 years after a guilty plea to a variety of charges that resulted in the death of a young woman in a major auto accident.  The prosecution, the defendant and the family of the late woman all issued statements indicating closure of the matter – – as best as it could be under the circumstances.  And then came a twist …

OJ Simpson also issued a statement saying that the Ruggs did not get sufficient comeuppance in the matter to satisfy the victim’s family.  He pointed out that he got a longer jail sentence in the same Las Vegas court for a crime where no one was even injured.  Seriously, OJ Simpson is speaking out on behalf of a victim’s family …

• That is sort of like Vlad the Impaler calling colonoscopies “fun experiences.”

Next up …  Just in case you think that OJ Simpson’s comment evidenced just a bit of “tone deafness”, let me suggest that tone deafness broke out in a couple of places yesterday.  Reports – – and photos confirming the veracity of the reports – – yesterday revealed some assistant coaches at Northwestern University wearing T-shirts that said:

• “Cats Against the World”

No problem there; it is pretty standard fare for a football team to play with a mindset that the team is all there is and that anything outside the team is either irrelevant or it is opposition.  But the assistant coaches’ shirts had an added wrinkle; the shirts also had the number “51” on them.  Fifty-one is the number fired head coach Pat Fitzgerald wore when he played at Northwestern and Fitzgerald has just been fired by Northwestern in the wake of reports of hazing activities while he was the head coach there.

It is perfectly OK for assistant coaches to think Fitzgerald should not have been fired but it is a tad tone deaf for them to express that displeasure when their employer is still investigating and trying to do damage control for existing and impending lawsuits against the school.  The AD at Northwestern specifically called this happenstance “tone deaf”.  I think this behavior goes beyond that and falls squarely into the category of:

•  “Pink slips at the end of the season.”

Switching gears …  I also mentioned yesterday the suspension of Orioles’ announcer Kevin Brown based on some critical remarks he made about the way the team had played in Tampa over the past couple of seasons.  SI.com reports today that Brown will return to microphone tonight in a game against the Mariners and that Brown is going to have to walk on eggshells until this mess recedes into memory.  He will be asked about this, and he will have to temper his remarks lest the owners get their knickers in a knot once again.

Kevin Brown will need to parse anything he says or Tweets very carefully but that is not the case for other announcers such as:

Al Michaels: “They should suspend the doofus that suspended Kevin Brown.”

Jon Miller: “The best thing that happened to me is that I didn’t stay there.”  [Aside:  Miller was formerly the lead play-by-play announcer for the O’s.]

Stephen Nelson closed out a Dodgers’ game broadcast saying, “Free Kevin Brown!”

Moving on … The Tennessee Titans are going against the grain in their first exhibition game against the Bears tomorrow afternoon.  Normally, for a meaningless game so early in the team-building process, the coach announces the team starting QB and indicates in general terms how much that starter will play and who might be seeing action after him.  Left unsaid is the fact that the offense will be plain vanilla which should be just fine since the opposing defense will also be plain vanilla.  But this year, the Titans threw a wrinkle in that normal process.

Head coach, Mike Vrabel announced yesterday that the team has made a decision as to which of the team’s three QBs on the roster will start; but when asked specifically if that QB would be Malik Willis, Vrabel said that it is “not a decision we are going to share.”  I know that Coach Vrabel spent much of his career playing for Coach Belichick in New England where things are buttoned up as tight as possible, but failing to reveal the starting QB for a meaningless exhibition game in early August … ???

And Vrabel and the Titans did not stop there in terms of shaking up NFL orthodoxy.  For the Bears’ game tomorrow, Vrabel will not be the head coach; that role will be played by Terrell Williams who is the defensive line coach/assistant head coach for the team.  Vrabel said he will be on the sidelines for the game and that he would be involved in setting up the coaching goals for the game, but that roster management and game decisions would be Williams’ responsibility.  So:

• Kudos to Mike Vrabel and the Titans for giving a minority coaching aspirant a significant experience to put on his résumé – – and simultaneously – –
• A big Bronx Cheer to Mike Vrabel and the Titans for being secretive about the team’s starting QB for a first exhibition game.

Finally, I’ll close today with this declaration by the humorist/journalist, Calvin Trillen:

“I’ve decided to skip ‘holistic.’  I don’t know what it means, and I don’t want to know.  That may seem extreme, but I followed the same strategy toward “Gestalt’ and the Twist and lived to tell the tale.”

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