Author: Jack

About 6 weeks ago – whilst the website was dormant – I wrote that I found it strange that Michael Sam was going to be a participant in Dancing With The Stars when he could be working to improve his pass rush and line backing skills. I assume that he still wants to play professional football in the NFL and the normal way one progresses from “practice squad player” to “roster spot player” is by training and working on football skills and football conditioning. Nonetheless, he has decided that Dancing With The Stars is a way station towards whatever his goal may be.

Yesterday, there were reports that the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL were extending an offer to Michael Sam and the GM of the Alouettes indicated that he thought there was a 50/50 chance that Sam would be in uniform in Montreal this year. Sam did go to the NFL Veteran Combine in late March but the reports coming from there did not provide much incentive for NFL teams to line up and bid for his services. Reportedly, he had “more muscle mass” than he did at the College Combine last year; that is a good thing for NFL linebackers. However, his time in the 40-yard dash was slower by 0.2 seconds than it was last year; that is not a good thing for NFL linebackers.

There are historical examples of players going North to play in the CFL and then returning to play well in the NFL. Warren Moon would have to be the poster child for that career arc. There also have been players for whom the Canadian version of pro football is better suited to their skill set than the NFL version. Should Michael Sam choose to “go North” for next year, we may anticipate that he will try again to make an NFL roster and we will have another datum with regard to the success of players moving from one league to the other.

Speaking obliquely of the NFL, the league continues to focus on global expansion of the brand. We already have 3 games in London next year and reports say that ticket sales have been impressive even this far in advance of the games. I saw one “league official” who is involved with the “international expansion efforts” quoted as saying that the objective would be to have a team full-time in London by 2022. Oh, but that is not all…

The Pro Bowl will be going to Brazil in February 2017. There are 200 million folks in Brazil; that is far too large a potential market for the NFL to ignore. After all, the population of Great Britain is only 65 million.

The league reportedly has its eye on Germany as another potential market. Recall that in the days of NFL Europe, there were 5 different teams playing in Germany. In fact, in the last year of NFL Europa (2007), there were 6 teams in the league and only the Amsterdam Admirals played outside of Germany.

The NFL wants to play at least one exhibition game in Mexico – preferably Mexico City – in the near future and preliminary steps to achieve that end are underway.

Most of all, do not forget China. According to reports, an important part of any move into China for the NFL is acquisition of media rights and in particular the league wants to consider digital delivery of the product over the Internet. Note how that desire dovetails with the NFL saying that one of its Thursday Night Games this year will be on a digital platform.

Regarding those 3 London Games this year, the NFL would have liked to put 4 games there this year but the Rugby World Cup will happen this year and made the scheduling impossible. I read one report that said that 40,000 fans have already bought tickets to all three of the games in London and that the NFL sees this as a fan base of potential season-ticket buyers should there be a London team down the road. While millions of words will be written regarding the NFL moving back into LA, there will be less attention paid to international extension of the league. Nevertheless, internationalization is coming and the NFL has plainly made that known to the teams:

Any team that relocates within the US must give up one home game in each of their “transitional years” to play in London – or potentially elsewhere overseas. The “transitional years” are the seasons between the announcement of the relocation and the actual move into the new stadium in the new city. Considering that 3 teams are reportedly interested in moving to LA, that makes a few teams eligible for playing in London in future years.

Any team that gets a Super Bowl game in its stadium will have to give up a home game to a London/international venue during a 5-year window as part of the deal.

In 2015, the NFL will have back-to-back games in London for the first time and supposedly plans to put a December game in London in 2016. [The “December game” is still in the planning stage, but several people say it is highly likely.]

As I said above, millions of words will be written about the NFL efforts to move back to LA but here are a couple of things that you will have to go looking for:

If the NFL does not like empty seats in its stadia that stand out like a sore thumb on its telecasts, LA might not be the best destination for a team. Folks there notoriously arrive late for games and leave early. And, even though there are about 16 million folks in the Greater LA area, the Rams and the Raiders rarely sold out their games when they were there.

I have said many times that Washington sports fans are front-running bandwagoners who will abandon a losing team as fast as a prom dress can hit the floor. Well, so too are LA fans. Check out attendance figures and trends for teams that are winners and ones that are losers. Oh, and compare attendance for the same team in winning years and losing years…

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

“Baltimore Ravens behemoth John Urschel co-wrote a paper, published in the Journal of Computational Mathematics, titled ‘A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians.’

“And to think, some of his O-line brethren can’t even remember the snap count.”

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

No, this is not an April Fool rant. This is just me in my normal cranky mode…

The women are having their version of March Madness in a parallel universe to the men’s tournament. If you would like to contemplate the depth of the competition in women’s college basketball this season consider that the Women’s Final Four consists of all four #1 seeds in each of the regional brackets. Can you spell “CHALK”?

Chris Mullin is the new head coach at St. John’s. Fifty years ago, St. John’s was one of the 20 most important college basketball programs in the US; twenty-five years ago, St. John’s was “a contender”; for the last decade or so, St. John’s is an after-thought when the topic of discussion is collegiate basketball. Chris Mullin is – arguably – the best player ever to come out of St. John’s and the school is betting that he can translate his NBA Front Office experiences to the recruiting trail so that he can get athletes who will make St. John’s relevant again. Oh, and then, he has to “coach those athletes up” and – not to put too fine a point on it – he has never coached before. I liked Chris Mullin as a player and he seems to be an interesting person when you hear him interviewed. Nonetheless, I think he may be in over his head here trying to resurrect a program that has been left to decay for too long.

In NFL news, the league announced the punishments for the Falcons and the Browns regarding rules’ violations in the last year or two.

The Falcons admitted they piped in recorded/amplified crowd noise for home games in Atlanta. For this the NFL fined the team $350K; suspended former marketing director, Roddy White, 8 games and suspended GM Rich McKay for 4 months even though he is the on the Competition Committee which has to present a potential rule change for this upcoming year during the course of his suspension. Oh, and the team lost a 5th round draft pick too.

The NFL suspended Browns’ GM, Ray Farmer, for 4 games without pay for texting with a Browns’ assistant coach during a game.

I understand why piping in extra noise is a violation of the rules because it could provide an on-field advantage to the Falcons at home. However, unless the league can demonstrate that the GM either ordered that behavior or knew about it and condoned it, I do not see why the GM gets punished here. Moreover, it seems as if the league is cutting off its nose to spite its face because McKay is a key member of the Competition Committee and they have some serious work to do if they are to come up with a proposed change to the PAT rule for 2015 by mid-May. I just do not get this punishment…

I do not even understand why there is a rule against the GM texting with an assistant coach during a game. Obviously, therefore, I do not understand the severity of the penalty levied against Ray Farmer. Imagine for a moment that I had the phone number of one of the Brown’s assistant coaches and knew that he would have his phone with him during a game. If I texted him a question such as “Why don’t you throw deep against this defense?” That would not be a violation. So, why is it a violation of the GM texts anything similar to that?

In the last week, we learned that Nebraska DE, Randy Gregory, tested positive for drugs at the NFL Combine. In a public statement, he said that the positive test resulted from some stuff he smoked in December and it was still in his system but that he had not smoked anything since. I will assume he is telling the whole truth here and I will simultaneously proclaim that he also tested positive for STUPIDITY. Look folks, the NFL tests everyone who comes to the Combine for drugs; I know that; agents know that; players know that; my grandmother probably knows that and she has been dead for about 40 years. If a potential high draft pick tests positive at the Combine when they know months in advance of the date and time of the “sampling”, then that potential high draft pick is dumber than soup.

The former CEO of Chiquita Brands International – think Chiquita Banana – has purchased a minor league baseball team. Fernando Aguirre now owns the Erie Sea Wolves of the AA Eastern League. The Sea Wolves are the AA affiliate of the Detroit Tigers and Aguirre is currently a minority owner of the Cincinnati Reds. That gives the “appearance of a conflict of interest” if not an actual “conflict of interest” but I have not been able to find anything that says that MLB is concerned about this or has any action in mind to obviate that “apparent conflict of interest.” According to one report I read, Aguirre is also a minority owner of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans which is the A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs in the Carolina League. So maybe MLB does not see this multiple ownership situation as any kind of a conflict of interest?

In any event, I wonder how long it might be until some kind of “Special Banana Split” becomes a food offering at Erie Sea Wolves’ games…

Regarding the brouhaha over Indiana’s religious freedom law, I have already tired of the calls to sports radio stations and pronouncements from folks on either side of this debate. In simple terms, here are some declarative statements:

No, it would not be feasible to move the Final Four to another state on 5 days’ notice.

No, the NFL and the NBA are not going to revoke those franchises in Indiana and their failure to do so does not indicate in any way that they condone this new law or oppose it.

Yes, it was abjectly stupid of the Indiana Governor to sign the bill when he did and even more stupid for him to weasel-word every answer to every question about what the new law would and would not cover.

Grandstanding pronouncements from “celebrities” who do not live or work in Indiana are nothing more than “Hey, look at me!” actions.

For all the “holier than thou” folks out there saying that each and every form of discrimination is evil, let me say unequivocally that if I owned a business I would absolutely discriminate against doing business with certain types of people such as:

Kleptomaniacs
People with outrageous B.O.

The edict of the Governor of Connecticut forbidding any employees of the State of Connecticut from traveling to Indiana – thus the UConn coaches cannot attend the NABC meetings there this week – is another grandstanding play. I wonder what would happen if one of those coaches decided to go and pay for it himself without using state funds. Seems to me that if he wanted to do that and the governor tried to stop him, that might be seen as a form of involuntary incarceration.

Finally, here are two comments from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald last weekend:

“The Fort Lauderdale Strikers open their new season in six days. If you know the coach’s name is Marcelo Neveleff, you’re probably playing for him.”

And…

“The International Game Fish Association Museum in Dania Beach is closing, verifying that the only thing more boring than fishing is visiting a fishing museum.”

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

As you know, there is a court challenge pending regarding the US Patent and Trademark Office allowing the “Washington Professional Football Team” to have trademark protection when it uses the name “Washington Redskins”. The challenge to that trademark is based on something called the Lanham Act which prohibits the registration of “scandalous”, “disparaging” or “immoral” trademarks. I am not a lawyer, so fear not; I am not about to go into some kind of history of the Lanham Act and how it has been applied. Rather, I want to focus on how the case may have taken a slight change in vector heading recently.

As the case made its way through the judiciary, I figured that it would be decided on the degree of “scandalous” and/or the level of “disparaging” became associated with the team name as the proceedings moved along. It is a case that seemed to me to have some elements related to a previous Supreme Court case that caused Justice Potter Stewart to say about hard-core pornography:

“I know it when I see it.”

However, recently the ACLU jumped into the fray with an amicus curiae brief urging the court to strike down those parts of the Lanham Act on the basis that they violate the First Amendment. I think I understand the basis of the argument to be that since the Patent and Trademark Office is a government entity, any time they apply the Lanham Act in a negative way it is a form of the government regulating speech/expression.

I am not going to try to offer an opinion on the ACLU position or on the case itself because I assert that the judge in this matter would have to be in a coma and on life-support not to have a more fundamental understanding of the matter than I do. However, one thing does confuse me about the ACLU position and perhaps someone who has been to law school might help me out here:

It seems to me that every trademark ever issued puts limitations on “speech”/”expression” by forbidding me – for example – from putting the NFL logo on a T-shirt and just giving it away. The whole idea of “property rights” seems to crash head-on into “expression rights” in a ton of circumstances. It seems to me as if the Napster case violated “free expression” as much as this case might.

We shall see how all of this plays out…

Whilst we have a brief respite in the NCAA tournament until the games next Saturday evening, take just a moment to juxtapose in your mind the idea that the NCAA will likely exceed $1B in revenue this year while it continues to maintain that it oversees amateur sports played by student-athletes. If the NCAA ever hinted that the concept of amateurism and amateur athletes was not the foundation piece for its games, the NCAA would have no reason to exist. Lest you think I am putting words in the NCAA’s figurative mouth, here is a paragraph from the NCAA website:

“Amateur competition is a bedrock principle of college athletics and the NCAA. Maintaining amateurism is crucial to preserving an academic environment in which acquiring a quality education is the first priority. In the collegiate model of sports, the young men and women competing on the field or court are students first, athletes second.”

Let me be clear. I can believe that paragraph in its entirety when it applies to Division III teams such as Linfield College football or Division II teams such as Philadelphia University basketball or even to Division I schools in places like the Ivy League or in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. I cannot swallow the piety of that paragraph when it comes to the big-time schools that are participating in the basketball tournament for real especially in light of the recent revelations of academic shenanigans at Syracuse and UNC. Make no mistake, those were not actions taken by “deranged boosters” or some “rogue recruiter”; the events at Syracuse and UNC were genuine academic fraud perpetrated by or condoned by coaches, players, athletic departments and faculty.

The NCAA cannot maintain that amateurism is a “bedrock principle” and that in the “collegiate model” the athletes are “students first” so long as those kinds of activities are not crushed when they are discovered. The hypocrisy level in that statement is so great that it immediately brings to mind a quote from William F. Buckley, Jr.:

“I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”

It would seem as if the NCAA continues to live with one abiding hope in terms of continuing to play the smoke-and-mirrors game with the American public. That one abiding hope was expressed by Noel Coward:

“It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”

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

Here are notes and comments on the weekend basketball tournament games:

Overall, the games on Thursday and Friday were mediocre while the games on Saturday and Sunday were all very good.

Louisville/North Carolina State was an ugly game particularly in the first half when “neither team can hit ANYTHING.”

North Carolina State got into the 60s; when teams do that to Louisville, they often win. Not here…

Bob Molinaro posed this question regarding NC State in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:

“Which way is it? After eviscerating Villanova, N.C. State is classified as an overachiever. But couldn’t you make the case that a team good enough to beat a No. 1 seed was guilty of underachievement by finishing only 10-8 in the ACC?”

Neither UCLA nor Gonzaga is proficient in offensive rebounding; “this is a one-and-done contest.” Gonzaga’s big men are not rim protectors.

Bryce Alford hit nine 3-pointers to win a game for UCLA in early round of the tournament; he hit his first 3-pointer with 2:21 to play in this game with UCLA down by 19 at that point.

The Kentucky/Notre Dame game was a GREAT basketball game. Period. “The only thing it lacked was overtime.”

Michigan St/Oklahoma was another ugly game; both teams missed open shots for the whole first half; neither team scored for a 5 minute stretch of the second half. All those missed shots clang off the rims as if they were boulders.

Duke/Utah was not pretty either. Let me reiterate something I said earlier:

Justise Winslow is REALLY GOOD !!

Louisville/Michigan State gave us extra time in a game that was tight from the start. Hard to ask for much more.

The Duke/Gonzaga game was a game of momentum swings; Duke’s win by 14 points is an example of a momentum swing. With 5 minutes left in the game, Duke led by 2 points and then the momentum swung… I think Damontas Sabonis played excellently and demonstrated the power of genetics; he is only a freshman and will not turn 19 for another month; he is going to be a really good NBA player. And now I am going to say something heretical:

Jahlil Okafor needs to return to school for another year instead of going to the NBA. His game is not ready for the NBA; his body is not ready for the NBA.

Please note that I did not say Okafor is not a good player; he is a very good player. The issue is that he is “a big” meaning he will have to bang bodies with centers and power forwards in the NBA and he is not yet ready to do that. He also does not pass well out of double-teams and his footwork on defense needs polishing too. Another year playing NCAA basketball will do him a lot of good.

Three ads that assaulted my consciousness over the weekend need comment:

Two people pull up to the dilapidated hotel with the crazy lady on the porch and use their in-car communication system to get out of there. They ask to be booked at the “furthest 5-star hotel”. Not a good idea because that might be in Beijing or Perth and their car isn’t going to get them there.

Game of War is clearly a computer game that I know nothing about. However, if you can “play for free”, how does the owner of the game find the money to pay for the advertisement and for the time slots in these games? I do not understand the business model here…

A “new show” on CBS will be The Odd Couple. Seriously now, hasn’t that been done to death yet?

Finally, here is another commentary from Bob Molinaro. I was fortunate not to have to listen to any of the radio broadcasts of any tournament games this year, so I did not have the same experience that he did. Nonetheless, he is definitely correct in his commentary:

“Too much static: Out and about in the car, I listened to parts of three NCAA tournament games last weekend, which means I heard a lot of screaming, yelping, screeching, wailing and howling from hysterical play-by-play men. And this was during the first half. When did so much caterwauling – to a supposedly neutral audience – become fashionable?”

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

Sports Curmudgeon 3/26/15

When you are the NFL and you are the 800-lb gorilla in the sports world in the US, you can do whatever you bleeping feel like doing. What the NFL has done regarding the Super Bowl next year fits the lifestyle of a good friend of mine about whom all of his friends say:

His motto in life is that nothing exceeds like excess.

At the end of this season – in February 2016 – the NFL will stage the 50th Super Bowl game ever played. That is a fact; you can go back and count the games. The NFL will “honor” this game by making everything imaginable connected to this season and to that game “golden” because of course people celebrate their 50th anniversary as their Golden Anniversary. For the record, my long-suffering wife and I will celebrate our 50th – our golden – anniversary in 2016 too unless, of course, she finally decides to dispatch me by planting a fire-ax between my eyebrows. I understand well the concept of a Golden Anniversary and look forward to celebrating one next year.

What the NFL is doing here is a fraud wrapped up in a sham encased in a Nigerian e-mail scheme. The first Super Bowl game was played in LA in January 1967; I tuned in to watch that game and have seen every one of the games since that one. The 50th Super Bowl game will happen in February 2016 and that is the 49th anniversary of the first game, not the 50th anniversary. Having celebrated a 49th anniversary only about 9 months ago, let me assure everyone that it is not one’s Golden Anniversary. The marketing and PR folks associated with the NFL should be boiled in oil for this fraud and by the end of the season most of you are going to agree with me.

Here are some of the things that the marketing/PR trolls are going to make happen:

The 50-yardline on every field for every game will have the numerals painted in gold on the field.

All of the logos for things like the Draft in May 2015 and the playoffs that start in January 2016 will be lettered in gold.

The NFL Shield this year will be in gold.

Many of the team hats/shirts/whatever sold in this celebratory year will have team logos outlined in gold. Or, of course, you can also buy the “traditional” gear if you prefer – or you could also buy both…

The winner of Super Bowl 50 – next February – will not only hoist the Lombardi Trophy but will also get the “Golden 50”. What might you ask is the “Golden 50”?

It will be the numerals “5” and “0” that have been bronzed and plated in 18-karat gold and of a size that each numeral will weigh between 30 and 35 lbs.

The only thing that can put this whole excessive nonsense over the top would be for the MVP in the Super Bowl Game to be – – wait for it – – Golden Tate.

A few days ago, I talked about the retirement of Chris Borland from the NFL because of his concern for his mental health in his later years. This week Borland announced that he would return a pro-rate share of his signing bonus to the Niners since he chose not to play out his contract. That means he is returning about $460K to the Niners. I have no idea how that affects their salary cap but it would be interesting to look at the books and see what the folks on mahogany row did with that $460K windfall…

Every year when the NFL holds its Spring Meetings, one of the agenda items is always proposed rule changes for the upcoming year(s). One change this year tries to clarify what is a catch for a forward pass in response to the “Dez Bryant Incident” in the playoffs and to the infamous “Calvin Johnson non-TD catch” from about 5 years ago. The sad thing is that the new wording in the rule does not clarify much of anything at all. More controversy to follow…

However, Dan Daly, on his fantastic blog Profootballdaly.com, has compiled a history of rule change proposals that the NFL owners have considered and subsequently rejected in their Spring Meetings over the history of the league. Please go and read this blog entry in its entirety; it is definitely worth your time. One of the rule changes that was rejected – in 1944 – was to award one point to the team kicking off if the kickoff went through the uprights.

All 32 NFL coaches showed up for a “photo-shoot” at the Spring Meetings. This is news because more often than not at least one of the coaches does not make an appearance and most often the absentee is Bill Belichick. I did not see any reports if he showed up wearing a hoodie – after all this was in Phoenix and not in Lower Kalskag, Alaska (population 294) – but there was a report that said Andy Reid showed up for the photo wearing flip-flops, shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. If the Hawaiian shirt fit Andy Reid, it might be a map of the Hawaiian Islands with a scale of 1:1…

Finally, here is a perspective offered up by Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald showing the status of sports in US society:

“Prince Charles’ U.S. tour has ended. It was similar to Derek Jeter’s retirement tour, only with 10,000-times less public interest.”

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

It snowed a whole lot in the Boston area this winter. I suspect that lots of people there had more than a few moments tucked inside their homes with no real prospects of going anywhere and some used those moments to reflect on matters of import. I suspect some folks resolved their feelings for others in those moments; others may have pondered some of the big social/political issues of the day; others may have taken the time to completely restructure their finances. It would appear to me that some of the folks who are involved with Boston 2024 – the group behind Boston’s bid to get the Summer Olympics to that city – used that contemplative time pondering this question:

Is this REALLY a good idea?

According to reports, the Chairman of Boston 2024 told area business leaders that the organization is going to get signatures on a petition to put a question on the 2016 ballot in Massachusetts asking if Boston 2024 should really make a final bid for the Games. Boston 2024 is a privately funded entity so no one involved there would run afoul of Boston mayor, Marty Walsh, and his edict that no city employee can speak ill of the Olympics, the IOC, the USOC or Boston’s bid for the games. Chairman John Fish reportedly told the business leaders that if the ballot referendum is not supported by a majority of the voters in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Boston 2024 will cease and desist with its efforts to pull together the final bid.

I read several accounts of Fish’s remarks and one of them said that he also indicated that Boston 2024 would stand down even with a majority in that referendum if the question did not also get a majority vote in the City of Boston. That added stipulation is not included in all of the reporting so I wonder about its validity. Nevertheless, what started out in a state of euphoria with Mayor Walsh approaching Nirvana in his joy seems to be coming into focus with reality. There is plenty of time between now and November 2016 when the referendum question will be on the ballot for politicking and deal-making; however, as a starting point, consider this:

A local radio station – WBUR-FM – conducted a poll of 500 Boston residents and found only 36% of the people polled supported the idea of Boston bidding for the Games.

It is not as if Boston politicians have never faced the problem of selling an unpopular idea to the voters. However, this may not be the slam-dunk that Mayor Walsh envisioned in his euphoric state a couple of months ago. Time to put the political operatives out on the streets…

Arizona State fired basketball coach, Herb Sendek, earlier this week. Sendek had been at ASU for 9 seasons; in that time his record there was 155-133 but his PAC-12 conference record was only 68-86. His teams had been to the NCAA tournament twice and to the NIT four times in those 9 seasons. I bring this up not because I think Herb Sendek got a raw deal; I bring this up because it reminded me to go and look for some other data.

Two years ago, Florida Gulf Coast University made a Cinderella run in the NCAA tournament making the Sweet 16 despite being seeded 15th in their region. They ran the court and dunked the ball and their coach, Andy Enfield had 15 minutes of fame. He bolted that job at the first opportunity to take the job at USC – another PAC-12 school. He has been there for 2 seasons and here is the USC record:

Overall record is 23-41
PAC -12 record is 5-31

USC has finished 12th in the PAC-12 in both seasons. Finishing 12th in a 12 team conference means they finished dead last.

Two points here:

1. Herb Sendek’s record does not look so bad in juxtaposition.

2. A coaching system that works against opponents such as Ave Maria, Florida Tech and Stetson does not always work as well against better competition.

As I was watching the tournament games, I had to notice that every announcing team had a “sideline announcer” appended to it. Those folks demonstrated yet again that sideline reporting and interviews with coaches at halftime represents very low grade ore. Other than the time when Richard Sherman called out Michael Crabtree right after the NFC Championship Game when interviewed on the field, I am hard-pressed to recall a sideline interview that contained anything bordering on informative – let alone newsworthy. The only good thing I would say about the sideline reporters for this year’s tournament is that I never saw one of them go into the stands and stick a microphone in front of a parent or other family member of a player or coach and ask something inane such as:

How does it feel to [fill in the blank]…?

Finally, Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle had this observation about athletes seeking trademarks:

“Jameis Winston’s marketing agency is attempting to trademark his college nickname, Famous Jameis,’ to protect his ‘intellectual property.’ Legal experts say this would be the least-intellectual intellectual property since ‘Kiss my grits.’

“ ‘This better not be about cookies,’ said Famous Amos.”

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

There seems to be resolution in the Darren Sharper matter where he has been accused of drugging and then raping women in four different states. According to a report in the New Orleans Advocate yesterday, Sharper, his attorneys reached a “global plea agreement” with prosecutors in four states and Federal prosecutors (because there were drug charges involved here too) to resolve all of the cases. In yesterday’s report, the details of the plea agreement were not revealed. However, for a full synopsis of this wide-ranging set of circumstances, the report from yesterday is most useful. Here is the link:

Now today, the plea agreement details have begun to emerge. According to CBSSports.com this morning, Sharper will get 9 years in prison and lifetime probation for the guilty pleas. According to the report, this resolves the charges that he first drugged and then raped at least 9 women in 4 states. Now to me, that seems like a very generous plea arrangement from the prosecutors. Ignoring the Federal drug charges for a moment, the math here is that he gets 1 year per rape and that seems a tad light.

Given all the negative attention that has surrounded recent events involving NFL players – Sharper was in the NFL for 14 years – and violence against women, I would have thought that prosecutors would have been a bit more hard-nosed in this situation. Well, at least we can be spared the drama of Roger Goodell and the NFL imposing some kind of suspension on top of this deal and the subsequent outrage from people who are convinced that neither Roger Goodell nor the NFL can ever get anything right.

In other NFL news, the league has lifted the blackout rule for the 2015 season. That means that fans in cities such as San Diego, Oakland and Tampa – where games routinely do not sell out – may get to see their home games on network TV. I am not completely certain this is an unfettered blessing for some fans such as the ones in Oakland who will now see the Raiders 16 times instead of only 8. Given the way the Raiders have played for the last 10 years or so, fans there may have developed a fondness for those weeks of home games so that fans could stay home and watch good teams play. This is the mirror-image of the adage that every cloud has a silver lining. In this case the silver lining has a cloud around it.

In any event, the NFL will go without the blackout rules for a year and then “evaluate the impact” after the season is over. Let me tell you what the impact is most likely to be:

Attendance in cities that sell out every game will be unaffected.

Attendance in cities that do not sell out every game will decrease slightly – particularly in bad weather circumstances where there will be almost no “walk-up traffic”.

Some season ticket holders in the cities that do not sell out will also stay home in bad weather situations or for some meaningless end-of-season games.

Therefore, revenue for teams that do not sell out every game will go down very slightly.

The fact that television rights provide the largest share of team revenue will be proven once again as no team will operate in the red.

If the NFL would like to name a committee to begin to evaluate the impact of the above, I will be happy to flesh out those 5 points for the committee members to give them a running start…

The league has another idea percolating with regard to telecasts for next year too. One of the London Games – the one in Week 7 between the Bills and Jags – will not be shown on standard TV and will not be part of the NFL Sunday Ticket package on DirecTV. The NFL wants the game to be on a “full digital platform” that can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection and/or by streaming. Stand by for more news about that initiative between now and October…

With the NCAA Basketball Tournament in full bloom, there is a little story in college basketball that has gotten about no attention. Let me do a reset for you here…

Geno Ford was the head coach at Kent State from 2008 – 2011. After that season he left Kent State to take the head coaching job at Bradley. The State of Ohio sued Ford for breach of contract and Ohio won a $1.2M judgment against Ford. That is unusual by itself but then Kent State moved to sue Bradley University for “tortuous interference” in the matter but then the Kent State side dropped the suit entirely about two weeks before the trial was scheduled to begin. So, the arrival of Geno Ford in Peoria to assume the role of head basketball coach at Bradley was a little out of the ordinary.

Now jump forward to 2015 when the college basketball season is over for all but the teams remaining in the various tournaments that are ongoing. Bradley University announced that it has fired Geno Ford as the head basketball coach. So what did Bradley get from Ford in his tenure there:

Overall record was 46-86
Missouri Valley Conference record was 19-53
Record in 2014/15 was 9-24
Missouri Valley Conference record in 2014/15 was 3-15.

So, is it just possible that one reason Kent State dropped its suit against Bradley was that it realized that one outcome might be that they would have had to take Ford back as their basketball coach and they did not really want him there in the first place? Just asking…

Finally, a note from Bob Molinaro in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:

“Cue laugh track: Darrelle Revis insists that it wasn’t the fully guaranteed $39 million that lured him away from the Patriots, but he returned to the Jets because, ‘This is where my heart is.’ They just don’t write lines like that anymore.”

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

Chuck Bednarik died over the weekend at age 89. He was a great middle linebacker before anyone knew about Dick Butkus and all the great middle linebackers that followed Butkus. Chuck Bednarik played in the first football game I ever saw; it was his last game at the University of Pennsylvania on Thanksgiving Day in 1948. My father took me to see the game; I was 5 years old.

Rest in peace, Chuck Bednarik…

The rest of today’s rant will simply be random notes from a weekend of watching basketball tournament games. So let me start with my first note that says Len Elmore is doing an excellent job as a color analyst. Co-analyst, Chris Webber, is a useless appendage.

The tolerance of traveling as evidenced by the failure to call the violation seems to have moved down from the NBA to the NCAA Tournament level this year. Takele Cotton took 3 full steps with the ball on a drive to the basket and there was no call. That was merely the worst of the “no calls”; there were plenty of others.

There was an ad for Bass Pro Shops that ran a half dozen times or so and one of the spokespersons in the ad was identified as “Pro Hunter and TV Host”. I had not realized that hunting was a professional sport until that moment. However, if I ever find myself participating in a Fantasy Hunting League, here are my top Draft Picks:

Tiger Woods
Wolf Blitzer
Hawk Harrelson
Bobcat Goldthwait
Jerry Tarkanian

Seth Tuttle (C UNI) is probably not going to have a long and storied NBA career, but he is a really good college player. In the UNI/Wyoming game, Wyoming had 24 points at the half and one of the Wyoming players hit 4 3-point shots to have 12 of those points. “Offensively challenged” is a fair label for Wyoming.

If you had to find one word to describe the West Virginia/Buffalo game, it would have to be “frenetic”.

Maryland and Valparaiso were in a game down to the final play. With about a minute left to play, two of the Maryland big men each committed a stupid foul to disqualify themselves. If there were stupidity deductions, Maryland would have lost.

Two comments from the Louisville/UC Irvine game:

Mamadou Ndiaye = Manute Bol + about 75 lbs.

Yes, Terry Rozier committed a foul that was not called on what was the final play of the game.

The Oklahoma State and Oregon uniforms were so loud that I suspect a couple hundred TV sets around the country blew out their color elements. When Joseph Young scored 15 straight points for Oregon near the end of the first half, all of the announcers resisted the temptation to call him “Mighty Joe Young”.

There was an ad for Century 21 where a real estate agent runs through the airport and through security screening to present a bouquet of flowers to a couple just boarding a plane to tell them “they got the house.” How did he get through TSA screening without a boarding pass?

In the Saint John’s/San Diego State game, neither team had anything resembling an efficient offense. The best move for either team was to miss a jump shot and then go play volleyball with the rebound.

Given Utah’s defensive prowess and Georgetown’s occasional struggles on offense, I thought this game might have ended as an ugly 52-50 contest. Instead, the game was much more entertaining.

I have always enjoyed Ian Eagle and Jim Spanarkel as an announcing team. The powers that be broke them up this year. Jim Spanarkel is teamed with Verne Lundquist and the two of them did a really nice job with their games. Ian Eagle and Doug Gotlieb were paired and they too were very good.

CBS keeps flogging me with the slogan:

“The Masters, a tradition unlike any other.”

Can someone tell me why the tradition of the Masters is any different from the tradition surrounding:

The Kentucky Derby
The Daytona 500
The Army/Navy Game
The Rose Bowl
Thanksgiving?

Just asking…

I really like Trey Lyles (Kentucky). With some time in a weight room, I think he has a nice NBA future ahead of him. He puts the ball on the floor effectively for a guy who is at least 6’ 10”.

For those who decry the lack of scoring and the slow pace of college basketball, the Butler/Notre Dame game was an example of many of your complaints. Nonetheless, it you watched that game and did not like it, I am not sure you really like watching basketball – or perhaps you graduated from Butler or you just hate Notre Dame. That was an entertaining game that was close from start to the finish – in overtime no less.

In the Villanova loss to NC State, ‘Nova had to have missed at least 3 open layups and a dozen open jump shots. Final shooting stats for Villanova were 19-61 from the field. You are going to lose a lot of games shooting that way.

There ought to be a law against Michigan State wearing those neon-green shoes on television. Most distracting…

There is a Southwest Airlines ad running where a kid visits four colleges with his dad and loves them all. The message is that Southwest’s low fares can get you to all these places for the college visits – so long as you read the voluminous fine print about those low fares. However, the kid loves everything he sees meaning he is not very discriminating in his tastes. I suspect that is why the kid can tolerate flying Southwest Airlines…

I love Justise Winslow’s total game. He can do just about everything very well. Perhaps Grant Hill got a tad ahead of himself declaring Winslow the best defensive player in Duke history, but the kid can play.

By the way, have they stopped calling 3-second violations in college basketball? SDSU center Angelo Chol was about to take root in the paint. On one trip down the floor, I had him at 6 seconds in there; after there was no whistle on that play, I just stopped watching him in there.

Wichita State finally got its chance to play Kansas and they dominated the game.

Conspiracy theorists must be going crazy coming up with the way the Selection Committee has treated Dayton this year. First they get a play-in game on their home court; then they are in the bracket that has the second and third rounds in Columbus, OH which is close to a home game for them. What did Dayton do to earn/deserve that kind of treatment?

I expected Gonzaga to beat Iowa but that was too easy. Gonzaga made Iowa look bad in that game.

The three games I am most looking forward to in the Sweet 16 round are:

Notre Dame/Wichita St.
Wisconsin/UNC
Gonzaga/UCLA

I think there will be two interesting – but very ugly – games in that mix also:

Kentucky/West Virginia
Louisville/NC State

Finally, a closing comment from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“Talk about watching an overmatched 16-seed taking on a 1-seed on national TV this week.
“But enough about Dick Vitale kissing Ashley Judd.”

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

If you still have a clean bracket sheet this morning, one of two things will happen:

a. You will win your office bracket pool in a walk – or –

b. The basketball gods will get even with you today.

What follows here are contemporaneous notes from watching yesterday’s games while wearing out the buttons on my TV remote.

In the Notre Dame/Northeastern game, Brian Anderson did the play-by-play and color analyst, Steve Smith, kept calling him “B.A.”. It got to the point that I thought I was watching a rerun of The A-Team. Notre Dame seemed very sluggish; I noted that perhaps they were not used to playing a game at noon – or maybe even being awake at noon. Their defense – they do play tough defense – saved them because their shooting and shot selection was less than impressive for a team that had beaten Duke and UNC twice each. Notre Dame’s big men were in serious foul trouble in the first half and sat out at least 10 minutes; moreover, Zach Auguste then got his third foul on the first play of the second half. Northeastern did not exploit that advantage.

Iowa State was the first of three Big 12 teams to take the pipe yesterday. Here is my note from the end of the game:

“#3 seed goes out in the early afternoon. Today is the day of upsets?”

Every time I flipped over to that game, UAB was outplaying them but the score was always close. With about 6 minutes to go in the game the score was tied and I started to think that I was jinxing UAB by leaving that game to watch another one because from the times I was tuned in I would have figured them to have a double-digit lead. UAB won by 1 point and indeed there were more upsets to come.

Arizona cruised against Texas Southern, a team that cannot shoot from the outside and a team that plays mediocre defense. Arizona could have named the score; this game was no more of a challenge for them than a game scheduled in early December against a cupcake.

Then Baylor – another #3 seed from the Big 12 – stunk it out and lost to Georgia State a team that won their conference tournament to get to this game by a score of 38-36. They may not score a lot but they do play pressure defense for 40 minutes. Ga State went about 11:30 in the second half without a field goal and they still won by a point.

Texas completed a day of ignominy for the Big 12 losing to Butler who lost their best player to a leg injury for just about all of the 2nd half. Texas is another team that “just cannot shoot from outside.”

Ole Miss got here by winning a play-in game. My comment in the midst of the first half was:

“Why did they bother winning that last game? Don’t seem particularly interested in playing this one.”

Ohio State beat VCU in a slight upset; Ohio State was a #10 seed. Here is my note from early in the game: and fundamentally, it was the story of the game:

“Ohio State is bigger; VCU is faster. Winner will be the one that exploits its advantage better.”

SMU and UCLA put on an entertaining game all the way to the end when a controversial call determined the outcome. The officials called goaltending on a 3-point shot attempt by UCLA with the Bruins down 2 and about 10 seconds left in the game. That proved to be the game winner and UCLA advanced. My note – as someone who refereed basketball for 37 years:

“Only second time I ever saw that call. Glad I never had to make one.”

One other note from that game:

“[Bryce] Alford shooting 3’s like his dad; makes you realize Mendel was right.”

For the record, Bryce Alford scored 27 points in the game hitting 9 three-point shots.

Villanova/Lafayette was a mismatch from the opening tip. About 8 minutes into the game my note was:

“’Nova can name the score here. Not interesting.”

Cincy/Purdue was an 8-9 game and it seems as if the Selection Committee was right seeding these teams so close to one another. The game was decided by one point in OT. My note for the game says Purdue “gagged” because they had a 7-point lead with about 45 seconds to play and let the game go to OT. In retrospect, that is not a fair comment; Cincy earned that win with its play at the end of regulation time.

UNC dominated the first half against Harvard and had the game in hand early in the second half. In my mind, I relegated that game to a low status for checking in; it seemed to be decided at that point. Then I saw the score get closer and closer and then Harvard took the lead with about a minute to play. UNC was fortunate to win the game.

Stephen F. Austin came to their game with Utah averaging 80 points per game. Utah obviously played a lot more and a lot better defense than SFA’s opponents had played. Midway through the first half my note was:

“No way they get 80 tonite. May not get 50”

They got exactly 50 and lost by 7 points to a better team.

NC State/LSU was another eight/nine game; and just like the Cincy/Purdue game, it was a nail-biter at the end. LSU led by 14 at one point in the second half and my note says:

“State looks like they don’t care.”

Well, that was wrong because State put it in gear and closed that gap to win the game.

One other note from the second half said:

“Tigers missing loads of foul shots”

Indeed, they missed 10 free throws and lost by 1 point…

Arkansas/Wofford was a good game to watch because it was close from beginning to end. I am not going to expend the effort to check the running score of the game, but I cannot recall either team leading by more than 5 points. This was not an artistic game by any means, but I enjoyed it.

Kentucky/Hampton was not interesting because the game was never in doubt as was the case with Villanova/Lafayette. My first half note here read:

“Ho-hum.”

Georgetown has not played well against double-digit seeds over the past several years but they manhandled E. Washington yesterday. My note says:

“Hoyas playing angry. Every shot is contested and everyone is involved on offense.”

AT&T gave us a series of new ads where Shaq and Dr. J and Christian Laettner and another player I did not recognize make silly remarks about themselves and the NCAA tournament. The dumbest one has Shaq declaring his nickname in college was The Big Dance – nominally a clever play on words here but not really – and then dancing in front of a TV screen to show Christian Laettner that he earned that nickname. Question:

Can anyone tell me what in the name of Chubby Checker that has to do with improved 4G LTE signals?

Finally, a note from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times:

“Pablo Sandoval isn’t overly rotund, Red Sox spinmeisters insist. He’s simply a roll model.”

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