Author: Jack

Back in the late 60’s, I was toiling away on research for my dissertation in a chem lab. There were moments of successful results mixed in with hours of tedium and lack of results and one of the things that a few of us grad students would do was to come up with ideas for a career that did not project to be a lifetime of that sort of laboratory plodding. I remember once coming up with the idea of starting a mutual fund – only it would not invest in stocks and bonds. I named my “fund” the Exacta Fund and its investment objectives would be to play exactas on horse races around the country and have the net asset value of the fund go up and down depending on the success from day to day. It did not seem to me to be such a radical departure from buying shares on the NYSE…

Of course it was all a fantasy and a way to deflect attention from our research travails – except now it appears as if something very much like the Exacta Fund is coming to reality. According to a report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal [where else?], Chris Connelly has founded Contrarian Investments LLC. It is a “sports betting entity” that became legal in Nevada last June. For the moment, Connelly only bets on pro football, college football, pro basketball and college basketball games.

There are now six such investment possibilities in Nevada. You can read about them and how this fits into the Nevada wagering industry here.

Anyone who has read these rants for any length of time knows that I think the Pro Bowl – and all other All-Star Games – are meaningless twaddle. Nevertheless, there is news regarding the Pro Bowl that deserves commentary.

1. The Pro Bowl will revert to the format of AFC versus NFC in 2017. The idea of having Hall of Fame players choose up sides from the players who chose to show up for the game was supposed to increase interest in the game. It did not; the idea was stupid from the start; now the NFL is going back to the original format which is also stupid – but not as stupid.

2. Starting in 2017, the home of the Pro Bowl will be Orlando, FL. Starting in the mid-70s the game was always in Honolulu – except for one time in Miami and one time in Glendale, Arizona. I have not been able to detect any cries of pain and angst from the good folks in Hawaii over “losing” this spectacle which indicates to me that they really don’t care all that much about the change of venue.

3. Orlando is a perfect place to hold the Pro Bowl. It is city whose economy is driven by theme parks that deliver fantasy experiences to customers. The Pro Bowl will provide a fantasy football experience for anyone who buys a ticket and goes to the stadium for the game. It fits like a glove…

Last week, The Big Lead reported that Chris Berman would be leaving ESPN – retiring – at the end of the upcoming football season. Berman’s agent subsequently denied the report saying that Berman is too young to retire – he just turned 61 – and that Berman loves his job. Time will tell if the report was accurate or not but when I read the report it got me to thinking of some of the nicknames that Berman has given to athletes in his years on the air. Three that I remember and really enjoy are:

Eric “Sleeping With” Bienemy
Odibe “Young Again” McDowell
Von “Purple” Hayes

Bill Simmons’ new website – The Ringer.com – has launched and it looks interesting. As with his previous venture, Grantland.com, the site features long-form articles on sports and entertainment. One of the early offerings is by Bryan Curtis under the headline “Meet Joe Buck”. I thought it was very well done and I commend it to your reading.

The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers are the Class A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers and play their games in Appleton, WI. If you have never been to that part of the world, Appleton is about halfway between Green Bay and Oshkosh. The Timber Rattlers are worthy of mention here because of a few of their culinary offerings at Neuroscience Group Field at Fox Cities Stadium. [Seriously, that is the name of their ball park.] Should you find yourself in the neighborhood and in search of dinner, consider:

The Meatlover’s Pizza Burger: Here is how you construct one of these. You take two pieces of pepperoni and sausage pizza; then, you stick a bacon cheeseburger between the two of them and eat it as a sandwich. For dessert, might I suggest 40 mg of Crestor…?

Grilled Cheese Venom Cheeseburger: The ”bun” for this burger is comprised of two grilled cheese sandwiches. The cheeseburger between those two “bun components” also has four slices of pepperjack cheese, jalapenos and an optional shot or two of sriracha sauce. With all that cheese, you may not be regular until Halloween…

Big Mother Funnel Burger: You guessed it. This bad boy features a bacon cheeseburger in a giant funnel cake – sprinkled with powdered sugar to be sure. I wonder if one should have a Bordeaux or a Burgundy with this concoction…

Finally, since I mentioned Contrarian Investments LLC and gambling entities above, let me close today with an observation from noted curmudgeon, Ambrose Bierce:

“The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.”

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

While I was gone, the Baylor football program entered and executed self-destruct mode. The idea that winning football games was sufficiently important so as to justify the covering up of sexual assaults by players who would make said winning of football games more likely is unspeakably horrendous. Sadly, that seems to have been the case at Baylor. I feel no sorrow for the coach, the athletic director or the university president who all took a hit in this matter; all that happened to them was to lose a job or to have their range of authorities circumscribed as a result of this matter. To my mind, that is a small price for them to pay.

As scurrilous as this recent situation was, there is a historical piece to this which – believe it or not – makes this only the second worst scandal in Baylor athletics. Back in 2003, the Baylor basketball coach was Dave Bliss. The short version of the Dave Bliss saga is:

Bliss had a kid transfer to Baylor when there was no scholarship for him but he arranged for the tuition to be paid ‘under the table’.

The kid was found shot to death – it turns out a teammate was found guilty of that act sometime in the future.

To cover up the “under the table payments”, Bliss orchestrated a cover story that the victim was dealing drugs and that the shooting was drug-related.

An assistant coach secretly taped one of the coaches’ staff meetings that detailed how the cover-up/stonewalling would work and it all unraveled.

Back in August 2003, I wrote about the situation at Baylor as it was unfolding. Lest you think that I am exaggerating what I thought of Dave Bliss back then as a way to minimize any criticism of the current miscreants at Baylor, here is one paragraph from my rant then:

“I will not reserve any judgment on Dave Bliss. I have to admit that I never thought that I would be alive long enough to say that Jerry Tarkanian needs to haul his ass out of the bull’s eye that is reserved for the lightning bolt that I want to hit the all of the sleazy coaches in collegiate athletics. Until last weekend, Tark had been in that spot so long that I thought his feet would have taken root in the bull’s eye. Tark is antediluvian pond slime; Dave Bliss would need about a billion years to evolve up the biological ladder to reach that lofty status.”

Perhaps the recent football mess at Baylor completes the Devils’ Trifecta of three horrible things to happen in Waco Texas.

1993: Branch Davidian siege and raid
2003: Dave Bliss
2016: Art Briles and company

Bob Molinaro had this comment on the Baylor football mess in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot. I think he hits the nail squarely on the head:

“Dumbfounding: The saddest commentary on Art Briles’ dismissal is that, despite the report detailing violent incidents and sexual assaults by Baylor football players, what people find most astonishing is that the university actually held a wildly successful coach accountable for what took place off the field. People are surprised by Briles’ firing because we’re conditioned to assume the worst from big-time football. Our colleges are to blame for that, but so are fans and media that buy into it.”

Back before I left, Mets’ pitcher, Noah Syndergaard hit two home runs in a game. Partly because he plays in New York, that was given a lot of attention; but indeed, that is not a common happenstance for pitchers. I would like, however, to do another historical perspective bit here and mention a game back in 1971. The pitcher was Rick Wise and he played for a bad Phillies team that finished last in the NL East winning only 67 games. That year, the Phillies played the Cincy Reds 12 times and won only 2 of those games. One of those wins was a no-hitter by Rick Wise AND in the same game, Wise also hit 2 home runs.

The Reds that year won 79 games; they were not yet the Big Red Machine but you may recognize some of the names that were in the lineup on the day of Wise’s no-hit game:

Pete Rose
George Foster
Lee May
Johnny Bench
Tony Perez
Hal McRae
Tommy Helms
Dave Concepcion
Ross Grimsley

Two other tidbits related to Rick Wise and the 1971 season:

In that same 1971 season, Rick Wise also hit 2 home runs in a game against the SF Giants.

Rick Wise is probably most remembered for being traded at the end of the 1971 season from the Phillies to the Cardinals even-up for Steve Carlton. Wise was better than average major league pitcher; Carlton was a Hall of Fame pitcher. The trade happened because Carlton and the Cardinals’ management got locked into a salary hassle that resulted in the trade.

Finally, since I cited a comment from Bob Molinaro above, let me close with another of his observations:

“Word play: It would make perfect sense for the 76ers to use their lottery pick on Ben Simmons. An Aussie is the right fit for a team that has spent so much time down under.”

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

Earlier this week, I received an e-mail from a reader with a link to an article in the Charlotte News & Observer dealing with the appearance that the UNC Women’s Basketball program will be the recipient of NCAA sanctions while the men’s basketball program and the football program skate with regard to the academic fraud situation there. Here are the salient parts of that e-mail:

“Perhaps this could be a rant topic for you.

“I’m a fairly cynical guy, so I can’t say I’m surprised that the two flagship revenue sports are completely clean, but women’s basketball is dirty.

“I’m also reminded of something I once read along the lines of ‘every time Auburn football has a bad year, they fire their basketball coach.’”

I suspect that the reader’s cynicism sensors have picked up a strong signal here but it is not clear to me where the responsibility for making UNC Women’s Basketball the scapegoat for the 20+ years of academic fraud perpetrated there belongs. I suggest that everyone read the report in its entirety to get a flavor of the current state of play. I will summarize it briefly here and try to identify some of the “bad guys” here:

It is pretty obvious that UNC offered sham courses that provided academic credits – and high grades – to students who never met with professors or attended a single class. Stats show that an extraordinarily high percentage of the students taking those courses were football players and men’s basketball players.

The fact that all students could enroll in these sham courses – and some non-athletes did – and could obtain credit for those courses means that the blame for the existence of those courses extends beyond the athletic department. The fact that the faculty and the administration of the university tolerated the existence of those sham courses is an indelible stain on the academic standing of the university itself.

I do not believe that any of the head coaches in any of the sports at UNC suggested the creation of these sham courses nor do I believe any of them knew about them or worked to sustain them.

I would not be shocked to learn that some assistant coaches and other athletic administrators/academic counsellors knew what was going on and that those folks actively kept information from head coaches to provide a sense of “plausible denial”.

Meanwhile, the NCAA finds itself in an interesting situation. There are no real “impermissible benefits” here; these sham courses were open to all students and these sham courses were used by the student body at large. No athletes had access to anything that was denied to any student enrolled at UNC. The NCAA mandates that students have a specific grade-point average and that they take a sufficient number of courses per academic year to be eligible. The NCAA does not – and they cannot and they should not – be an arbiter of what course content must prevail in each course taken by every athlete such that it is worthy of academic credit and inclusion in a grade-point average calculation.

However, the overriding purpose of all those NCAA rules and regulations is to prevent one school from having an on-field advantage over other schools. One way for a school to gain such an advantage is to use players who might not be really academically eligible and one way around that it to give those players A’s in courses that have no content.

Moreover, the NCAA faces the unenviable task of figuring out how to sanction teams that play for a school that is widely recognized and widely followed in both football and men’s basketball – where most of the money comes from. No matter what decision the mavens there come up with, there will be shrill voices of protest out and about in the land. That being the case, maybe the mavens will take this opportunity to get it right and punish as many of the ne’er-do-wells as it can find and to punish them severely.

The fact that I am 99% sure that is NOT what the mavens will do demonstrates my level of cynicism here…

Earlier this week, Jayson Stark wrote for ESPN.com about the delays caused by MLB’s replay rule(s). He provided data and made some suggestions. I would like to comment on them here:

Replay delays in 2016 so far average 1 minute and 55 seconds. That is an increase over 2015 and 2014. Delays in 2014 were 1 minute 46 seconds and in 2015 were 1 minute 51 seconds. These delays are the costs associated with “getting it right”.

So far this year, 42.5% of the replay reviews resulted in a change in the call made on the field. If the last overturned call benefited your favorite team, maybe you find that rate of return on the time spent acceptable. Personally, I do not.

Stark suggests putting a time limit on the managers who pop up onto the top of the dugout step and wait for a signal from their “replay review mavens” with regard to the value of going out to protest. That is a hidden form of delay that precedes almost every replay challenge. I think the time should be zero. If the manager hits the top step, there should be a replay AND there should be a limit on the number of replays he can demand.

Stark suggests that reviews should start before a challenge is made on close plays. MLB insists that is happening. Somehow, that does not pass the smell test because if it did, at least once you would see the umpire go over to the stands and put on the headset and hear the answer to the challenge immediately. He would then take off the headset in less than 2 seconds and make the ruling. Maybe MLB thinks it is happening and/or that it ought to happen, but I cannot believe it is.

Stark suggests having a 5th umpire on every crew and that the 5th umpire would rotate into the review booth in that park for every game. Maybe that is a good idea and maybe it isn’t. I do know the umpires’ union would love the idea.

I think Jayson Stark’s best suggestion is that MLB stop reviewing “The Utley Rule”. He says umpires should make the call and that is it. That would eliminate a ton of replays all of which take a lot of time because the “slide play” and the “neighborhood play” are often ones involving inches and tenths of seconds. The reviews are lengthy and the number of challenges to base running plays at second base are significant. If MLB were to go along with that suggestion – and I think it is a good one – they could use their replays after the game to grade umpires on the correctness of their calls at second base on such plays. I can promise you that the umpires’ union would hate that idea.

Baseball games take a long time and there are too many segments of a baseball game where there is no action. Anything that will minimize – or get rid of – the 5-minute delays to scrutinize a replay as if it were the Zapruder Film is worth doing.

Finally, here is a baseball item from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“David Ortiz stole a base for just the 16th time in his career. He caught the second basemen and shortstop playing Words With Friends.”

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

Today will be a tidying up day… Let me start with a report I read that said the NBA salary cap will jump from about $72M per team this year to approximately $90M next year as a result of ginormous new TV contracts kicking in. That is good news for the owners and the players; there is more money for all to share. I am not so sure however that this is completely beneficial for fans.

In addition to seeing “superstar salaries” go through the roof over the next 24 months, the other thing you are likely to see is that “role players” and “bench players” will also get big raises. Instead of that genre of player making somewhere between $2.5M and $4M per year as they tend to do today, they are going to start earning $5M and up. That is great for their personal exchequer but it also presents them with a dilemma that has practical implications.

If “Sixth-Man Sam” is making $2.5M today and he gets a minor strain in his oblique, he may or may not tell the coach that he needs to sit out a game or two. If he is making $5M a year, he might be far more inclined to sit out with even a minor ailment because:
a. He wants to maximize the likelihood that he will play like a $5M player when he on the court and not look like a guy the Front Office made a mistake on.

b. He wants to maximize his stat lines because there is always another contract negotiation coming up and for “Sixth-Man Sam” the likelihood is that he does not have a 7-year deal.

I am not implying that players should play hurt no matter what; of course they should not. Nonetheless, when there are big paydays at stake, a player is logically inclined to consider every minor problem in the context of it possibly becoming a major problem. If that sort of mindset prevails, then the fans are going to watch more and more games where players sit it out. The fans who pay to go to the arenas will see more games where teams participate without their full roster and the fans who tune in to see the games on TV will watch more games of the same type. The salary cap explosion might not be a great deal for the fans…

Another downside of the cap expansion is that it comes as a result of the explosion in TV rights fees that the NBA collects. Sadly, that assures that any revolutionary thinking on the part of the league to shorten the season will be squashed immediately. There is no way the league would even consider putting a control on the flow of TV cash into its coffers; TV is major component of the revenue so putting as much content on TV is the mandate for the league.

Sadly, from a fan’s perspective, what the NBA really needs is to cut down on the number of meaningless games – say 95% of the ones played before Feb 1st – and increase the number of games it shows to fans that really matter. I have been thinking about ways to do that – without simply cutting back on the regular season and thereby removing content from the networks – and all I have come up with so far are half-baked ideas. But I shall continue to contemplate this issue and hope to have a reasonable proposal to offer somewhere down the road.

In other NBA happenings, the Memphis Grizzlies fired Dave Joerger as their coach and the Sacramento Kings snapped him up 2 days later. Joerger had been with the Grizzlies for 3 seasons and his cumulative record there was 147-99 with playoff appearances in all 3 seasons. Now, Joerger takes his coaching skill to Sacramento where he gets to try to get along with “Boogie” Cousins and crew. Oh, and he also gets to deal with a mercurial and meddlesome owner too. Consider:

The last time the Kings made the playoffs was in 2006. That year the team fired Rick Adelman as the coach.

Joerger is the eighth coach of the Kings since the start of the 2007 season. Only Paul Westphal managed to stay there for the equivalent of 2 full seasons (He coached 171 games).

“Boogie Cousins arrived in 2010 – with Westphal in charge. Since his arrival in town, the Kings have gone through 5 head coaches and Joerger is the 6th.

Good luck to Dave Joerger; he is going to need it. Oh, and I assume his agent made sure that the deal is guaranteed for whenever Joerger gets fired by the Kings.

The last thing I read about the possible move of the Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas painted the local issue as a contest between building a football stadium or expanding the Las Vegas Convention Center. I guess I can understand why Nevada and Las Vegas cannot come up with enough money to do both projects at the same time and given my longstanding skepticism about the worth of building stadiums with public money, I am not about to advocate for one here. However, I would like to make an observation not as a citizen of Las Vegas but as an annual visitor:

There is a Convention Center in the city near the Westgate Hotel where we often stay. I have not been inside the building but from the outside it looks big enough to house the assembly of NASA’s Space Shuttle and the parking lots around the building look big enough to park at least 10,000 cars – maybe 15,000?

I recognize that Las Vegas is the home for some of the largest conventions and trade shows in the country. Nonetheless, I am surprised to learn that the current facility is so small and/or so antiquated that it would need an upgrade that would cost even a fraction of what a new football stadium might cost.

Obviously, this is an issue over which the citizenry and the local pols can arm-wrestle for a while. I am not taking sides in this purported struggle.

I will however comment on two things that Raiders’ owner Mark Davis said recently after meeting with some of the Las Vegas pooh-bahs. First he said that he had no intention of using Las Vegas as leverage to squeeze a favorable stadium deal out of the city of Oakland. On this point, I have to say that I believe him because I do not think that there is any way that Oakland could come up with the money to build an acceptable NFL stadium in the near future. I think Davis recognizes that.

However, he also reportedly said that putting the Raiders in Las Vegas would “bring worldwide attention to Las Vegas”. I am not so sure that is the case. In fact, I suspect that “Las Vegas” has greater name recognition worldwide than either “Oakland Raiders” or “National Football League”. That may seem like nit-picking but it does not make a lot of sense to me to try to sell the folks in Las Vegas on a “billion-dollar expenditure” on the basis that it will help Las Vegas be more widely known.

Finally, here is Bob Molinaro cutting directly to the chase in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:

“This year’s model: Reportedly, Caitlyn Jenner will appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated this summer – ‘wrapped in nothing but an American flag and her Olympic medal,’ as one story put it. It will commemorate the 40th anniversary of Jenner’s golden decathlon performance at the Montreal Games. For some, the cover will help show how far we’ve come as a society. For others, it will demonstrate the lengths to which a magazine will go to move product.”

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

Anyone who has read these rants for more than a short while knows where I stand with regard to sports betting:

It should be legalized, regulated and taxed.

Banning it is a feckless exercise because making it illegal drives it underground much the same way Prohibition drove the manufacture and sales of alcohol underground.

People are going to wager on sporting contests despite any sort of government intervention that might be acceptable in the US social/political system.

So with those biases on the table, here is some data that might get some of the tight-asses who think that gambling is the work of the Devil to think again. A recent report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal said that the sports betting industry has been growing very rapidly in recent years and that it could be a $5B per year “industry” in Nevada very soon. Here is the trend for the sports betting handle over recent times:

2006: $2.4B
2012: $3.0B
2015: $4.2B

You can see the trend there…

Some folks attribute the explosive growth recently to the use of mobile aps by the sportsbooks. Maybe that is it or maybe it is the fascination with fantasy sports – and daily fantasy sports – that has focused attention on the opportunities to wager on individual sporting outcomes. There are myriad people who play fantasy sports regularly who have never put down a wager on a single sporting event; in a sense, fantasy sports may be the “gateway drug” to sports wagering. Let me give you one vignette that will not “prove” that statement but will give you an indication as to why I am thinking along these lines.

I have a neighbor who is a big sports fan. He is into fantasy baseball and fantasy football up to his armpits. Every reader here knows that I do not play fantasy sports but he surely does. I know that he is in at least 2 fantasy baseball leagues this year and last Fall/Winter he was in at least 3 different fantasy football leagues. He is not averse to wagering money on the outcome of those fantasy league endeavors.

About 6 weeks ago, he asked me to explain how “half-points worked” because he saw a line on a basketball game that had one team favored by 3.5 points. He had no idea what that meant because he knew for sure that there was no such thing as a half-point shot in basketball. After I explained that to him and he understood he had another question for me.

He wanted to know what it meant when odds were listed as -110 or +140. He is an intelligent and educated man so explaining this to him was not difficult but he is in his 60s and he had never encountered either the “half-point concept” for a spread or the common expression of odds on a money-line. [Aside: I was tempted to tell him about Total Lines but thought at that point I might overload his synapses. That lesson is deferred to some later date.]

My point here is that I believe there is a large untapped market for legal sports wagering in the US over and above the HUGE market that is already tapped by the illegal sports betting environment. There is plenty of room for growth in sports betting and the only real question is this:

Will the growth be in the “legal sector” where it is regulated and taxed – – or – –

Not?

In that Las Vegas Review-Journal article cited above, there are data for some recent wagering events:

Super Bowl 50 last February had a handle of $132.5M. That is a 33% increase over the past 3 years.

March Madness 2016 had a handle estimated at $200M. The exact figures are still being tallied in Nevada and will be reported soon.

The Mayweather/Pacquiao fight last year had a handle of $80M all by itself.

A little over 50 years ago, Bob Dylan wrote and sang that The Times they Are a-Changin’. At the time, Dylan was talking about social change and different attitudes with regard to racism; however, today the same concept applies because the times NEED to be a-Changin’ with regard to sports betting in the US.

Now with that polemic as a backdrop, let me inform you that there are lines posted as of today for each and every NFL game for the upcoming 2016 season. That is correct; you can get down on any and all of the 256 games because a company – CG Technology – has posted lines for each game. The company provides tech support to about a dozen sportsbooks in Las Vegas including many that you have heard of and possibly visited in your times there. Yes, I realize that betting on games at this point when the first important and debilitating injury of the 2016 season has not yet happened is tantamount to playing the lottery with smaller payoffs. Nonetheless, the lines are out there if you care to go and find them – and to wager on them if you must.

For the purposes of today’s rant, I will simply list a couple of the biggest point spreads in these “Future Lines” – and from those spreads I think we can spot a perception that is out there:

Niners at Seahawks – 14 – Sept 25 – Largest spread on the board now
Niners at Panthers – 11.5 – Sept 18 – Second largest spread on the board now
Browns at Bengals – 11.5 – Oct 23 – You thought the Browns would dominate?
Niners at Cards – 10.5 – Nov 13 – Looks like a bad year for SF…

Finally, this next item needs a bit of a set-up. The 420 Games are a “series of unique athletic events taking place in CA, CO, WA & OR that promote the healthy and responsible use of cannabis.” All of the events somehow involve feature a 4.20 mile course and there is a beer tasting garden set up by a brewery in Petaluma, CA, educational speeches and of course lots of music. After the 420 Games had concluded, Dwight Perry had this observation in the Seattle Times:

“The 420 Games — “The Olympics for Stoners” — took place March 26 on the Santa Monica (Calif.) Pier, but not without controversy.

“Apparently three contestants were stripped of gold medals when they passed a drug test.”

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

I doubt there are many folks who have more than a casual interest in sports who have not heard about Leicester City’s improbable season. They are the English Premier League champs sitting 10 points ahead of second-place Tottenham with only one game to play. The team has plans to reward its fans with a free beer and free Pizza Hut pizza; anyone with a ticket to the final game gets both. It is a great feel-good story but it masks the real drama that remains in the EPL season. There are deep feelings of unease, angst and apprehension down at the bottom of the table in “The Relegation Zone”. Here is the deal:

Aston Villa is guaranteed to be relegated to the English Football Championship next year. They have played 37 games this season and have won only 3 of them.

The bottom three teams get relegated; that leaves two more teams – and sets of fans – in a state of high anxiety. Here is the situation as of this morning:

Norwich City is next to last in the table with 31 points – but they have 2 games still to play

Three from the bottom at the moment is Newcastle with 34 points. They have only one more game.

Four up from the bottom – but not out of the woods – is Sunderland with 35 points and still 2 games to play.

In the EPL, a team gets 3 points for a win and 1 point for a draw. That means any one of these teams can make it out of the Relegation Zone when the day of reckoning comes in a week or so.

By the way, in case you are not familiar with the geography of northeastern England, Newcastle and Sunderland are about 20 miles apart. There is a long-standing rivalry going back more than 100 years. If things stay the way they are now, Newcastle will not be playing Sunderland twice in the EPL next year…

Greg Cote had this mention of Leicester City’s EPL champion ship season in the Miami Herald recently:

“Leicester City won the first EPL championship in its history against 5,000-to-1 odds. Coincidentally, those were the same odds against the Dolphins’ No. 1 selection being pictured draft-night wearing a bong gas mask.”

The Zika virus has gotten a lot attention by the UN World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control here in the US. The consequences of a Zika infection are serious indeed and the prevalence of the virus – for the moment – is in warm climates because the mosquito that is the disease vector is a warm weather insect. The virus can cause pregnant women – or women who become pregnant after encountering the virus – to give birth to severely impaired children. Two countries – Brazil and El Salvador – have suggested to the women in those countries to avoid getting pregnant until at least 2018 so that eradication of the insects and medical advances can catch up to the consequences of the virus.

Earlier, that caused some female competitors to wonder if Zika was a sufficient threat to have them opt not to participate in the Rio Olympics this summer. Men too can be infected and some male athletes wondered aloud if going to Rio was a good idea. I have not read any reports of widespread “defections” from the Olympic ranks, but it was a subject that came up. I mention this because the Zika virus has caused a change of venue in another sport – MLB.

The Pirates and Marlins had scheduled two games in Hiram Bithorn stadium in San Juan Puerto Rico for 30-31 May. Puerto Rico has had confirmed cases of Zika; here is what the CDC website says about Puerto Rico:

“Local mosquito transmission of Zika virus infection (Zika) has been reported in Puerto Rico. Local mosquito transmission means that mosquitoes in the area are infected with Zika virus and are spreading it to people.”

The players, the MLBPA, MLB and the teams came to the decision to play those games in Miami instead of in Puerto Rico at the end of the month. As Shakespeare said:

“The better part of valor is discretion…”

Of course, Greg Cote of the Miami Herald took the announcement of the change of venue and wondered about its ultimate efficacy:

“Marlins’ May 30-31 games vs. Pirates will not be played Puerto Rico as scheduled because of threat of Zika virus there. Instead the games will be played at Marlins Park, because of course we have no mosquitos in South Florida (!)”

The FIFA Ethics Committee [/chuckle] has something called “the adjudicatory chamber”. If that does not sound like a “star chamber” then I must be seriously off mark here. In any event, that “adjudicatory chamber” handed down two edicts recently and banished for life two individuals who plead guilty in the US to charges of “racketeering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy.” The two men were senior figures in the world of Latin American soccer:

Sergio Jadue was formerly the VP of CONMEBOL (the South American Football Association) and the former President of the Chilean Football Association.

Luis Bedoya was also a former VP of CONMEBOL and the former President of the Colombian Football Association.

Without going into the details of what they did or did not do, the edict bans these men from virtually any association with football (national or international) for life. Presumably, they can still go and buy a ticket and watch a game if they so choose, but nothing much beyond that.

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

“Nebraska’s bowling team is ranked No. 1 in the nation.

“Who says the Cornhuskers no longer get to play in meaningful bowl games?”

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

Greg Cote summed up the status of horseracing as an element of the sports cosmos in 2016 with this observation in the Miami Herald last weekend:

“Nyquist wins Kentucky Derby as gates open on Triple Crown season: Nyquist showed why he was the betting favorite in Saturday’s 142nd Kentucky Derby. Still, most thoroughbred experts predict we likely won’t see an end this year to the Triple Crown drought stretching all the way back to 2015.”

We had some folks over to the house on Saturday to watch the race – and to have some mint juleps and some wine and some really nice food. None of our guests could name a single horse in the race – not even Nyquist. There was a time when one of THE prime assignments at a newspaper was “the beat writer for horseracing”. Those days are long – oh-so-long gone…

Evidently, the sportswriters who intimated – or said outright – that the Red Sox were merely saving face when they said Pablo Sandoval had a shoulder injury were incorrect. The story now is that Sandoval will undergo surgery on his left shoulder and that in all probability he will miss the rest of the 2016 season. Just so no one thinks that they need to start a GoFundMe campaign for Sandoval, he will still collect on his $17M guaranteed salary this year – – but will miss out on the potential for any performance bonuses. Prior to his injury, Sandoval went to the plate 7 times; he got 1 walk and that was it. I suspect that is not enough to trigger any of his bonus clauses.

This is only the second year of Sandoval’s guaranteed 5-year deal with the Red Sox. Here are his salaries for the future:

2017: $17M
2018: $18M
2019: $18M

Oh, and if Sandoval does not eat himself out of MLB by the end of the 2019 season there is a – snicker if you will – club option in the contract for the 2020 season at $17M (with a $5M buyout).

Unless he gets that shoulder fixed properly AND he finds a way to shed about 40-50 lbs and get into some sort of athletic condition, that contract will have to go in the Pantheon of Bad Sports Contracts. Once again, Greg Cote summarized the essence of this situation with a single brief comment in the Miami Herald:

“Yes, Pablo Sandoval played only three games for the Red Sox and was 0-for-6 before season-ending surgery. However, in that short time he did lead all AL batters in second helpings”

While I am in the mode of quoting sportswriters on current events in baseball, consider this one from Bob Molinaro in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:

“Striking out: As another MLB season with expanded replay unfolds, there’s still very little about the review system I like. After almost every close call, a manager pops out of the dugout in an obvious delaying tactic while his instant-replay gremlin analyzes the video and assesses the odds of winning a challenge. Is this baseball’s idea of keeping the games moving?”

He is right, you know.

I am sure you have heard more than enough about Eagles’ QB, Sam Bradford, being miffed at the team for trading up to take a QB with the #2 pick in the draft and how he went home and refused to participate in the team’s voluntary off-season activities. The only question in my mind is this:

Is he being a petulant child or this this utterly infantile behavior?

However, the story gained just a tad of panache last week when Terrell Owens said that Bradford’s behavior was that of a coward. In case you think I am making that up, here is a link to the report. When I read this, here is what went through my mind:

How desperately must this man want to see his name in the papers? He is also the guy who laments that the NFL has “blackballed him” because no team will give him a tryout when they need to replace a WR in mid-season. So, here he goes out of his way to remind everyone in every NFL Front Office why he has been labeled a locker room cancer…

Cue Bugs Bunny: What a maroon.

Fans on the South Side of Chicago have a treat awaiting them when they go to a White Sox game at US Cellular Field. No, this is not some fat-laced sandwich concoction or a “death-by-carbos” dish. No here is what the White Sox have as a fan offering:

The Boozy Snow Cone: What’s in a name, you say? This is crushed ice with flavored snow cone syrup PLUS vodka.

I wonder if sales spike in those games where the Sox are trailing by 6 runs after the first two innings…?

Finally, here is an observation from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“I read that former Major League Baseball player Clarence Blethen is the only player to bite himself in the butt. As claims to greatness go, I’m labeling this rather lame.”

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

With the NBA Playoffs in full bloom – and with all the blowout games so far, that full bloom is polluting the air with tons of pollen indeed – there have been more than a couple of games that were decided in the final minutes when the officials “swallowed their whistles”. After issuing pabulum comments in the wake of the first couple of these events, the NBA did acknowledge that officials ignored 5 different fouls in the final moments of a Spurs/Thunder contest. The prevailing narrative in support of the “swallow the whistle philosophy” has been:

The referees do not want to be the ones to decide the game outcome; that should be done by the players.

Here is my problem with that narrative:

By not making those calls in the final moments of a game that should be called because the on-court actions are fouls, the referees are in fact deciding the outcome of the game by not enforcing the rules in the book.

Let me be clear here. I am not suggesting that we are looking at a 2016 outbreak of “Tim Donaghy Influenza”; if long-term NBA conspiracy theorists want to include these recent events into their decades-long narrative about Front Office edicts over who wins and loses specific playoff games, so be it. Nonetheless, the recent spate of “no-calls” or “missed calls” has been so widespread that I have begun to wonder if the NBA has sent its officials to some sort of joint training program with WWE referees.

I do not agree with the idea that officials should change the way they call a basketball game in the final moments with only one exception:

If there are two minutes to play in any game – regular season or playoffs – and one team is winning by 35 points, the only time I would blow a whistle would be if the ball went out of bounds or if a foul occurred that was so egregious that it might draw a personal foul penalty in the NFL.

In the circumstance above, the idea is to get the game over with. The only calls that need to be made there are ones that maintain order. However, if the score difference is 3 points and there are 30 seconds left on the clock, every foul and every violation may be critical calls with regard to the outcome. If the “players are to decide the outcome” then the officials have to make all of the proper calls to enable the players to do so.

Speaking of the NBA Playoffs, there is a story that I find uplifting in and among the stories about poor officiating. Chris Bosh has a blood clot on one of his lungs and clots in his leg. The pulmonary condition was diagnosed more than a year ago and he has missed a lot of playing time last year; the leg clots were detected this year and he has been out of action for a couple of months. These conditions are not like a blown-out knee when can be rehabbed with a lot of work; blood clots may be treated and controlled, but when/if they break loose, they can be fatal. He has a condition that could kill him – not “kill his career”; I mean kill his body.

Chris Bosh is on medication and he wants to play for the Heat in the playoffs. The team can obviously benefit from having his talent available to them in the playoffs, but the team has refused to put him on the active roster. The Miami Heat is acting contrary to its short-term interests and in favor of Bosh’s long-term interests and the team’s long-term interests too. That sort of behavior is not prevalent in the world of professional sports and I find it laudatory.

Well, I am on an NBA track today, so let me tell you about another story that came out earlier this week. Recall that the NBA decided on a “trial program” to allow teams to sport a 2.5-inch by 2.5-inch patch on their uniforms bearing a sponsor’s logo. Well, earlier this week, the league informed the teams about what sorts of sponsors were permissible and what sorts of sponsors were impermissible. According to a report on CBSSports.com, here are the ones that are not going to be allowed:

Alcohol: An interesting banishment here – teams can sell beer in the arenas but cannot wear a 6.25 square inch patch that has a beer brand logo on it. Hmmm…

Tobacco: Perfectly understandable. Some will decry this as overly politically correct; I think those pronouncements are silly.

Politics: Perfectly understandable. Might someone take this to the Supreme Court claiming the patch is “protected political expression”? I hope not.

Media company: Understandable. They do not want patches for “Network X” on players while the games are on “Network Y”.

Nike competitors: Understandable. Nike has the contract to make all the uniforms and display the Swoosh; they do not need mixed messages there.

Gambling: Another interesting banishment. FanDuel has “partnerships” with about half the teams in the NBA so will Fan Duel – and or Draft Kings – be allowed to buy a team’s patch?

As is always the case, making a list of things that are not allowed opens the door to things that are not on the list but might be out of line with the sort of image that the league might want to maintain. For example:

Condoms
Bordellos
PETA
Colon Cleansers
Westboro Baptist Church – – I could go on here but you get the idea…

Finally, let me close with a comment from Brad Rock in the Deseret News regarding an NBA player from times past:

“Astronaut Scott Kelly has returned from a year in space only to learn he is two inches taller than when he left.

“Somewhere Muggsy Bogues is saying, ‘Now they tell me.’”

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