Category: Daily Rants

Football Friday falls on a Thursday this week.  The reason for that calendar inversion is rather simple.  Early tomorrow morning, I will board an airplane for a flight to Las Vegas; our “Annual Autumnal Pilgrimage” is much earlier than usual this year due to major calendar conflicts in the month of October.  And so, this week’s offering is being composed at a time when the lines for some of the games – particularly NFL games – are still in a fluid state.  No matter; we will make do with what we got…

College Football Commentary:

Let me start with some reflections on last week’s college football games.  The teams ranked in the Top 25 in the pre-season polls did very well last week.  Those teams went 24-1, and the one loss (by Oregon) was to another team ranked in the Top 25 (Auburn).  There will be plenty of changes in the shuffling of the order of these teams – and there will surely be lots of “replacements” too as the season progresses.  However, for the first week the pollsters seem to have “gotten it right”.

The seemingly perennial success of the SEC in football has generated a cadre of folks who in modern parlance are “haters”.  Those haters can revel in the results of last week’s college football games where 4 SEC teams lost to opponents that do not have the pedigree of “an SEC team”.  Let’s review:

1. South Carolina led UNC 20-9 in the 4^th quarter and came from ahead to lose the game 24-20.  Remember, UNC was 2-10 last year.  This was Mack Brown’s first game back as a coach in about 7 years.  This loss is probably the least embarrassing one for the SEC since UNC is also a Power 5 school.
2. Missouri lost to Wyoming – not a Power 5 school – by a score of 37-31.  Mizzou outgained the Cowboys 530 yards to 389 yards and only gave up 92 yards passing.  Here is the embarrassing part; the Wyoming coach earned a “six-figure bonus” in his contract for beating this SEC opponent.
3. Ole Miss lost to Memphis 15-10.  Memphis is a member of the American Athletic Conference (AAC) which is never mistaken for the SEC when the subject is football.  What makes this game very embarrassing for Ole Miss and the SEC is the dominance of the Memphis defense here.  For the game, Ole Miss generated a total of 163 yards of offense (83 passing and 80 rushing).  In the first half, Ole Miss had a total of minus-1 yard rushing.  That’s bad enough but the Rebels’ offense is now under the tutelage of Rich Rodriguez who is generally known as an offensive guru.
4. Tennessee lost to Georgia State 38-30 in the most embarrassing loss of the day.  Why is this the most embarrassing loss of the day?  Let me count the ways…  First, Tennessee reportedly paid Ga St $950K to make the trip to Rocky Top and take a beating at the hands of the Vols.  That did not happen.  Next, Ga St was a 26-point underdog in the game, and this was the first time that Ga St has ever beaten a Power 5 team.  Third, Ga St is a Sun Belt team and Sun Belt teams aspire to become AAC teams one day.  Fourth, lest you think that Ga St was some sort of lurking power among the smaller football programs, they were 2-10 last year.  They were mediocre on offense (90^th in the country out of 130 schools) and they were way south of mediocre on defense (125^th in the country).  Fifth, the Vols overhauled their coaching staff significantly in the offseason to “change the culture”; they have a new offensive coordinator and a new defensive coordinator.  And all of that resulted in a loss at home to Georgia State…

Jeremy Pruitt is the head coach at Tennessee and his job security took a major hit last weekend.  BYU comes calling this week and then there is another cupcake home game against UT-Chattanooga before the Vols start SEC play with games against Florida and Georgia.  Pruitt came to Tennessee last year and went 5-8 in 2018; this embarrassing loss is not going to be forgotten quickly; Jeremy Pruitt’s honeymoon at Tennessee is over.

You can accuse me of piling on here if you wish – – but that is what we do here in Curmudgeon Central:

• One more home loss to a school of the football pedigree of Ga St and you can start referring to it as Rocky Bottom.
• Since Tennessee paid Ga St to make the trip and then Ga St beat them up, you might want to call this a “Jussie Smollett Game”.  Too soon …?

Teams at the top of the SEC did just fine last week.  Alabama beat Duke 42-3 in a game that I said would be an organized ass-kicking.  Georgia beat Vandy and covered a 3 TD spread in the process.  Auburn rallied to beat Oregon as noted above.  Florida beat Miami and LSU demolished Georgia Southern.

In the Big 10, Ohio State toyed with Florida Atlantic winning by 24 points.  Illinois beat Akron 42-3.  Wisconsin dominated USF 49-0 with Jonathan Taylor rushing for 183 yards in less than ¾ of a game.  Penn St. beat Idaho 79-7 in a game that should not have been scheduled in the first place.  Maryland beat Howard 79-0 in another game that should never have been scheduled.  Northwestern lost to Stanford 17-7, but Stanford was ranked in the Top 25 so that is not an embarrassing loss.

Nebraska beat South Alabama which was expected.  What was unexpected is that it took two defensive TDs and a punt return for a TD to make it happen.

The worst loss for the Big 10 came when Purdue lost to Nevada 34-31.  Purdue was cruising at halftime with a 24-7 lead.  But the second half was all Wolfpack.  The fact that Purdue turned the ball over 5 times assured their demise.

There was another embarrassingly bad loss last weekend; Florida State lost at home to Boise State 36-31.  That may not sound all that bad – – until you know that Florida State led at halftime 31-19; that’s right; they were shut out in the second half and as embarrassing as that could be, consider that the Boise St. comeback was led by a true freshman at QB.  Coach Willie Taggert – – who is not all that far from becoming known colloquially as Beleaguered Coach Willie Taggert – – said that he was not sure that his team was properly hydrated for that game.

• Memo For Coach Taggert:  That’s on you!  If you and your staff – in the second year of your regime in Tallahassee – cannot more properly hydrate your team than the folks from not-so-tropical Boise State, then you may not be up to the job you have signed onto.

It’s time to cut out the apologetic language for the Florida State program under Willie Taggert.  It stunk out the joint last year and it did not cover itself in glory in Game One of this year.  Consider that the Seminoles’ defense allowed Boise St. to post 586 yards of offense.  Meanwhile, the total offense for the Seminoles in the second half was all of 51 yards.  That is – – using plain language – – unacceptable…

Here is the “fork in the road” question from the outcome of the Florida State/Boise State game:

• Does this fire up the “FireWillieTaggert.com” website and its progeny?
• Does this start a media narrative that Boise St will be the team that is frozen out of the CFP this year?

Or … could it be both…

If you want a feelgood story from last week, consider that Kansas won its season opener against Indiana State.  Yes, I know that Indiana St. is a Division 1-AA team but this is a win for Les Miles in his first game at Kansas; as of this morning, Les Miles is undefeated in Lawrence, Kansas; that situation will not obtain for very long, so we need to enjoy it for the moment of its expression.

In ACC action, Clemson beat Georgia Tech 52-14.  Last week, I said this game would get ugly quickly; the score was 28-0 at halftime.  The Clemson defense looked as if it might be a top-shelf unit once again this year despite sending 4 players to the NFL over the summer.  The Clemson offense racked up 632 yards and Travis Etienne carried the ball 12 times for 205 yards and 3 TDs.  Wow!

Boston College beat VA Tech in a conference game on opening day by a score of 35-28.  The surprises here are twofold:

1. BC actually scored 35 points in a single game?
2. BC did that against the defense coached by the legendary Bud Foster of VA Tech?

So that you know that this outcome was not a fluke, Boston College amassed more than 300 yards of offense in the first half of this game…

Notre Dame beat Louisville 35-17 – – but the Irish did not look dominant in doing so.  Louisville was a disaster last season giving up 40+ points every time you looked at the weekend scoreboard.  The Cardinals were 2-10 for the season and 0-8 in ACC games.  They turned over the entire coaching staff and this team has plenty of speed but not a lot of brute strength.  Speed can – however – be lethal and after watching this first game, it would not surprise me to see Louisville win a handful of game this year.  The Louisville QB runs around a lot – and he is very fast – but when he tries a pass, it is like Pee Wee Herman trying to connect with a certified hottie in a bar during Happy Hour.

Cincy beat UCLA 24-14 last week.  This is not an auspicious start for Chip Kelly in his second year in Westwood.  The reason I say this not auspicious is that “OFFENSE” is Chip Kelly’s calling card and in this game the Bruins managed to gain only 2.5 yards per offensive play against Cincy.  Maybe at the end of the year, I will look at this differently if Cincy holds the rest of its opponents to similarly underproductive totals.  However, I am not going to bet on that; I think that Chip Kelly does not have the players to run his style of offense at UCLA and that he is too stubborn to admit that and make changes.

Out west, Utah/BYU was a 9-6 game at half time in the rivalry known as The Holy War.  [Aside:  The intensity of this rivalry equals many of the nationally recognized rivalries but this one does not get nearly the widespread attention that it deserves in my opinion.]  Utah was one of the pre-season Top 25 and the Utes pulled away in the second half to win 30-12.  I said in a previous rant that I think Utah can win the PAC-12 South again this year and maybe win the PAC-12 thereby going to the Rose Bowl; their defense in Week 1 was solid; it held BYU under 300 yards total offense.

There was a meaningless game that caught my attention last week.  Rutgers beat UMass like a drum.  It was 21-7 early on; it was 38-21 at halftime; the final score was Rutgers 48 and UMass 21.  I said last week that being a “more-than-2-TD underdog” to Rutgers might be a message to the folks who run UMass that maybe – – just maybe – – they do not belong in Division 1-A football.  Losing to Rutgers by 27 points puts an exclamation point on that suggestion I made…

NCAA Games This Week: (Remember, these are lines from early in the week…)

Texas A&M at Clemson – 17.5 (64.5):  The spread opened at 19 and dropped immediately to this level; the Total Line opened at 60.5 and jumped to this level by Tuesday afternoon.  Let me be clear; I do not think Texas A&M is going to win this game on the road against Clemson.  But that line might have a bit of fat in it.  The Aggies do not have the talent level of teams like Alabama or Clemson; but they are not a bunch of stumblebums who just happened to find their way into a sporting goods store where there was a sale on shoulder pads.  The Aggies should keep this closer than Georgia Tech did last week; they might keep it down to a 2-score game.  Put this one in this week’s Six-Pack.

New Mexico St. at Alabama – 54 (64):   The spread here opened at 55.5 and has dropped because that is a metric ton of points to lay.  However, consider this…  Last week New Mexico St lost to Washington St. by 51 points.  So, is Alabama only a field goal better than Washington St.?  Here is another question …  Who has done the scheduling for New Mexico St. starting out against the likes of Washington St and then Alabama?  The Marquis de Sade?

Stanford at USC – 1.5 (45): USC had a Pyrrhic Victory last week; they beat Fresno St. 31-23 but lost their starting QB for the season to a knee injury.  Stanford is on the fringes of the “Top 25” and travels to LA to take on the Trojans.  The spread opened at 3.5 points and has dropped quickly to this level.

Rutgers at Iowa – 20 (50):  Rutgers manhandled UMass last week.  Please do not confuse UMass with Iowa.

LSU – 6.5 at Texas (55):  Both teams would like to think of themselves as “dark horses” to crash the CFP party this year.  I am not buying into any of that; but these are two very good teams and this is probably the best game of the week in college football.  The spread opened at 4.5 points and has inched up all week – – telling me that there is a heavy preponderance of money on LSU in this game.  I don’t think LSU is 9.5 points better than Texas which is what the spread would be on a neutral field if the spread at Texas is 6.5 points.  That means the line is fat so put LSU plus the points in this week’s Six-Pack.

Cincy at Ohio St – 15.5 (55.5):  Cincy beat UCLA comfortably last week.  Ohio St. plays football on a higher plane than UCLA.

Army at Michigan – 22.5 (47.5):  It is always interesting to watch a “big-time school” take on one of the service academies because it means the “big-time school” has to defend the triple option for the one-and-only time of the season and it has to deal with an opponent that though out-manned will not stop playing hard.

Vandy at Purdue – 7 (56):  Both teams lost last week and neither loss was a pretty one…

USF at Ga. Tech – 6 (62):  Last year, USF won its first 7 games.  Then it lost 6 in a row and it started off 2019 with a loss last week.  Not good…  Ga Tech got trucked by #1 Clemson last week and has a new coach and a new offensive system.  Not good…

Arkansas at Ole Miss – 7 (52.5):  I am looking at last week’s results and the upcoming schedule for these two teams in the SEC West and thinking that this may be the only “Conference win” for whoever wins this one.

(Fri Nite) Marshall at Boise St. – 10.5 (57):  Will this be a let-down game for Boise St, after beating Florida St last week?  How will Boise St. do on a “short week” and the long trip home from Tallahassee to Boise – – approximately 2000 miles.

Ohio at Pitt – 5 (54):  Ohio will try to run the ball against Pitt.  If they can do so in their power run game, they will turn this game into a classic UNDER bet.  Pitt gave up 129 yards on the ground last week…

Syracuse at Maryland – 2 (56):  My guess is that one of these teams will win this game by at least 10 points.  Which one …?  If you pick the winner here, the spread should not intervene…

Nebraska – 3.5 at Colorado (65):  Colorado beat Colorado St. by 3 TDs last week; Nebraska beat South Alabama by 2 TDs last week.  What bothers me about Colorado here is that they gave up 505 yards of offense to Colorado State in the process of winning that game.  Here are two undefeated teams that did not look all that good in Week 1.

BYU at Tennessee – 3.5 (52):  This is a career moment for Jeremy Pruitt at Tennessee.  If the Vols lose this game at home, they are looking at a 1-4 start for the season and that will not feed the bulldog with the folks in Knoxville who have humongously unrealistic expectations for their football teams.

Coastal Carolina at Kansas – 8 (52):  Les Miles seeks to extend his home game win streak to 2 games here…

Miami – 3.5 at UNC:  The spread opened at 6 points and has been edging down all week.  This is an important game for both teams.  If UNC wins, it will be 2-0 and will have matched last year’s win total before the equinox.  Miami lost last week against a team considered to be in the Top 10; no one thinks UNC is of that caliber; so, if Miami wants to use the loss last week as a rallying point for the season, it needs to win this game convincingly.

Cal at Washington – 14 (43):  If this is indeed a low scoring game as indicated by the Total Line, those 14 points look very attractive.

Oregon St. at Hawaii – 6.5 (78):  This is the second PAC-12 team in two weeks to pay a visit to Hawaii.  Last week, Arizona came home with a loss.  Most folks think Arizona is a better team than Oregon State.  You make the call …  The Total Line here indicates that this should be a “TIO Game” where Tackling Is Optional.

NFL Commentary: 

            As the 100^th season of NFL football commences with a Packers/Bears game in Soldier Field, two very brief points of NFL history seem appropriate:

1. The Packers joined the American Professional Football Association (APFA) in 1919 and that entity morphed into the National Football League.  When the team was formed, Curly Lambeau got money from the Indian Packing Company – a company that packed and canned meats – to fund the team’s uniforms.  That is how the team nickname became the “Packers”.
2. The Bears began their existence as the Decatur Staleys.  It was a “company team” for the A. E. Staley Food Starch Company and they played their games at Staley Field which was a “recreational facility” for the employees.  The company hired George Halas to run the club in 1920 and turned the team over to Halas in 1921 as negotiations proceeded to give birth to the National Football League.

            Back in the Spring – it was proximal to the NFL Draft as I recall – there were reports that the league and the players’ union were going to sit down and begin discussing/negotiating a new CBA despite the fact that the current one still has time to run.  The reports said that the NFL wanted to have a new deal in place by the start of this season.  Well, “this season” begins tonight at 8:20 PM when the Packers and Bears kick off at Soldier Field.  Having heard no reports from insiders regarding major breakthroughs in said discussions/negotiations, I suspect that this will be a deadline missed.

An NFL storyline that persisted over the summer months dealt with the retirement of Rob Gronkowski and whether he was going to change his mind and come back to play with the Patriots in 2019.  The fact that he has not signed on to do so as of this morning coupled with the start of the season this evening would seem to suggest that he will not be playing a full season in New England in 2019.  However, his retirement does raise an interesting question:

• Who deserves the mantle of “Premier Tight End in the NFL” now that Gronk has retired?

I think there are two candidates and I will list them here alphabetically because I am certain that any of the 30 teams that do not have one of these guys on their roster would offer sacrifices to the football gods if they could acquire either one.

• Zach Ertz (Eagles):  He is not quite the downfield threat that Gronk was nor can he block in the power run game the way Gronk did.  He runs great routes and when he gets his hands on the ball it is as if he has magnets in those hands.  Last year, he caught 116 passes for 1163 yards.
• Travis Kelce (Chiefs):  Like Ertz, he cannot block nearly as well as Gronk could.  Kelce is a bigger downfield threat than Ertz.  Last year, he caught 103 passes for 1336 yards.

You make the call…

Ezekiel Elliott and the Dallas Cowboys have finally reached an agreement on a contract extension and Elliott can stop working out in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.  According to reports, the deal is for 6 years (to begin after the 2 remaining years on Elliott’s rookie contract expire) for $90M with $50M of that contract guaranteed.  I do not doubt for a moment that there were sticking points in these negotiations along the way, but the timing here causes my cynicism gene to activate.

• If the Cowboys can “accommodate” $90M to Elliott from 2021 through 2027 with regard to the salary cap and its anticipated levels in those years, it would seem clear to me that those calculations and accommodations could have been recognized several months ago.
• It is going to take a bit of convincing to get me to believe that this “contractual impasse” was not driven by a desire to keep Ezekiel Elliott out of harm’s way in training camp – and meaningless Exhibition Games – as much as by money and contractual language.
• The ancillary benefit that accrued to the Cowboys by making this a “contractual impasse” was to keep the Cowboys front-and-center in NFL news stories for the past several months.  And we do know how Jerry Jones loves to deal with the media…

A story broke earlier this week that the Raiders have fined Antonio Brown $53,950 for missing 2 practices.  There is no question that he missed the practices; there is no question that the Raiders are within the terms of the CBA to levy and collect the fines; there is no question that many teams rescind such fines for star players; there is no question that Antonio Brown is not happy with the fact that the Raiders want him to “pay up”.  None of that is particularly interesting to me because there is another issue here that is below the surface:

• One of the things that was cited about Brown’s deleterious effect on the Steelers’ locker room was that he sometimes skipped practices.  [Aside: Somewhere Allen Iverson smiles knowingly…].
• The Raiders gave Brown a new $50M contract with about $30M of it as guaranteed money as one of the events that got him from the Steelers to the Raiders.
• The Raiders may be a tad miffed that Brown has not shown the same respect for the Raiders that the Raiders showed to him.  However, can they really be surprised here?  They gave a certified prima donna $30M guaranteed and then they expected that he would change his behavior patterns?  Really?

The Games: 

(Thurs Nite) Green Bay at Chicago – 3 (46.5):  The Bears featured defense last year and they have a new defensive coordinator for this opening game.  The Packers featured offense last year – and for several years before that – and they have a new coach and a new offensive system for this opening game.

Atlanta at Minnesota – 4 (48):  This line has been rock-solid; no movement of any importance.  The Falcons have the better QB and the Vikes have the better defense.  The tipping point in this game is Dalvin Cook because the Falcons defense has been vulnerable to the run for several seasons now.

Washington at Philly – 10 (45):  This is the biggest spread on the board for the weekend, and it has been getting larger as the week unfolds having opened at 7.5 points.  I will not make a pick in a Week 1 divisional match-up where the spread is in double-digits, but the Eagles are a better team than the Skins.

Buffalo at Jets – 3 (40.5):  Another divisional game in Week 1 but this one ought to be close.  The game may be very important to these teams in terms of tiebreakers once December rolls around.  The Bills’ defense was second in the league last year in terms of yards allowed; it was the Bills’ offense that did not hold up its end of the stick.  Josh Allen and his buddies need to show improvement this year.  I am tempted to take the UNDER here, but it is too early in the season to put that sort of trust in both of these defensive units; however, I agree with the oddsmakers that this should be a low-scoring game.  In low-scoring games I like to take points so put the Bills +3 in the Six-Pack for the week.

Baltimore – 6.5 at Miami (38.5):  Who knows if the Ravens’ “newfangled offense” for Lamar Jackson is worth anything?  Given the opposition this week, we will likely not know the answer to that for Week 2 – – unless of course the Ravens’ total offense in this game is 125 yards.  Against the Dolphins’ defense, this is a game where Lamar Jackson should shine and get people to over-react to his Week 1 stats.  The Dolphins are tanking and if Ryan Fitzpatrick maneuvers a win for the team here, you can consider his “Fitzmagic” to be on a par with Harry Houdini’s.  Mao Zedong embarked on “The Long March” as part of his revolution to seize control of China; the Marlins start here on their own version of “The Long March” but their destination is “Sorry-assed”.

SF at Tampa “pick ‘em” (50.5):  The oddsmakers want me to pick the winner here.  I prefer not to do that.  I think the Niners are the better team – – but they are not yet a reliably good team.

KC – 3 at Jax (52):  We can be pretty sure that the Jags’ defense will be good, and we can be pretty sure that the Chiefs’ offense will be pretty good too.  The reports surrounding the Jags for this year say that the biggest improvement there is not Nick Foles at QB but rather, a new and energized running game featuring a more mature Leonard Fournette.  If that is the case, then the Jags have a shot at this game because the Chiefs’ defense against the run is suspect.

Tennessee at Cleveland – 5 (45.5):  This is another of those “Tectonic Lines”; there has been little to no movement.  The Titans have been one of the most unpredictable squads in the NFL for several years now; the Browns are – far and away – the most over-hyped squad in the NFL now.  The last time the Browns won the opening game of the season was in 2004.

Rams – 2.5 at Carolina (49.5):  Assuming that Cam Newton is fully healthy on Sunday, I think this game could turn into a shootout where the losing team scores 30 points.  I like the OVER in this game, so put it in the Six-Pack for the week.

Detroit – 3 at Arizona (46.5):  This game opened as a “pick ‘em” game and for some reason enough people bet real money on the game to move the line.  Folks, this is the Dog-Breath Game of the Week.  Who knows how – or even if – Klif Kingsbury’s air attack offense will work in the NFL?  Who in their right mind would bet on the Lions on the road and give points?  File this game under the letter “I” – – for “Ignore”.

Cincy at Seattle – 9.5 (44):  The Seahawks are a good team that just got better by adding Jadeveon Clowney.  The Bengals are a hot mess on offense because their OL is not very good plus AJ Green is injured and he is far and away the best offensive player on the roster.  It’s a large spread, but I think this one will be a blowout in Seattle so put the Seahawks to win and cover in this week’s Six-Pack.

Indy at Chargers – 6.5 (44.5):  The spread here opened at 3.5 points and the Total Line was 48 points; then Andrew Luck made his announcement.  Luck’s absence here has overshadowed the fact that the Chargers will play without Melvin Gordon and Derwin James.  Gordon’s replacement will be Austin Ekeler.  If that name is unfamiliar to you, that is because he was an undrafted free agent who went to college at Western Colorado in Gunnison, CO.  Yes, this is a road game for the Colts in terms of geography, but the tiny crowd in the StubHub Center will not be any sort of intimidation here.

Giants at Dallas – 7 (45.5):  Anyone who thinks the Giants are the better team here is living in a delusion; even if Ezekiel Elliott were still in Cabo San Lucas working out there, the Cowboys would be the better team on the field.  The most interesting part of this game is that Elliott and Saquon Barkley will both be on display.

(Sun Nite) Pittsburgh at New England – 6 (50.5):  This is the Game of the Week.  I think both teams will win their division; that is not true of any other match-up in Week 1.  Both teams had to make roster changes in the offseason, but these are the two most stable coaching staffs and franchises in the league.  Neither team is going to make disastrous choices on that axis.  I think that line is fat; I can easily see this game being decided on the last possession.  Moreover, even in the decade of dominance for the Pats, they are not nearly as dominant in September as they are in December/January.  I’ll put the Steelers plus the points in this week’s Six-Pack.

(Early Mon Nite) Houston at New Orleans – 7 (53):  The Texans’ outstanding defense took a hit last week with the trade of Jadeveon Clowney.  The Texans’ embarrassingly bad OL got an upgrade last week with the trade for Laremy Tunsil.  The team may or may not have improved, but Deshaun Watson’s peace of mind must have improved.

(Late Mon Nite) Denver – 1 at Oakland (43):  This line opened with the Raiders favored by 3 points at home.  For the line to have moved that much – and to have changed the favorite – there must have been a preponderance of “Bronco money” that showed up early.  Here is a key to this game:

• The Raiders OL has been less than good for a couple of years now.  The Broncos have a pair of pass rushers in Bradley Chubb and Von Miller that will harass Derek Carr all night.  Can Jon Gruden scheme a way to negate their pass rush?

Let me review this week’s Six-Pack:

1. Texas A&M + 17.5 at Clemson
2. LSU +6.5 at Texas
3. Buffalo +3 at Jets
4. Rams/Carolina OVER 49.5
5. Seattle – 9.5 vs Cincy
6. Pittsburgh +6 at New England

Finally, the full onset of football season will provide the opportunity for automobile manufacturers to inundate us with ads for their SUVs.  You know they are coming…  So, here is a pertinent entry in The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“SUV: Sport Utility Vehicle.  A type of automotive transport that has, for some unknown reason, gotten a bad rap just because, in times of world unrest, difficult economic circumstances, and impending environmental destruction, its fuel economy tops out at about 4.2 miles per gallon.”

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

 

 

I mentioned in my first Football Friday for this season that I have a former colleague who has lobbied for Tennis Tuesday to be a feature of these rants.  Obviously, if I were to attempt to do that, I would need to pay a lot of attention to tennis so that I would have some perspective and/or basis for commentary on things happening in that sport.  Right now, the US Open is underway and a happenstance in that tournament pretty much assures that I will not be pondering a deeper dive into the events of tennis.

Mike Bryan is an elite doubles player; he teams with his brother, Bob; they were entrants in this year’s US Open.  Let me be clear; I do not know Mike Bryan from Mike Tyson or Brian Williams; if Mike Bryan walked into my home and bit me on the ankle, I would have to ask him his name.  Mike Bryan was fined $10K by the tennis mavens for the following incident:

• There was a shot that was ruled as “in” by the line judge.
• The Bryan Brothers requested a review and the review showed that the ball was “out” and that the line judge made an incorrect call.
• After the ruling was reversed, Mike Bryan took his tennis racket and placed the head of the racket against his shoulder such that the handle was pointed outward.  Then he “pretended it was a rifle” and aimed it at the line judge.

That behavior engendered a $10K fine and that is absolutely nothing more than Virtue Signaling on the part of the tennis mavens – and Virtue Signaling is something we have in over-abundance to the point that Virtue Signaling needs to attract scorn.  Look, if what Mike Bryan did was sooo egregious that it required a Virtue Signaling response, why not set the stakes such that he would never think of doing something like that again – and neither would any other tennis player no matter how much of a “bad-boy” he might be.  What might such a punishment be?

• How about declaring that he and his brother are disqualified from the match and that they are eliminated from the US Open and their opponents will move to the next round of the tournament.

Please don’t tell me that is an over-reaction because I think fining someone $10K for pretending that a tennis racket is a rifle is either a gross over-reaction or a feckless gesture.  [You may take your pick here.]  This is the “grown-up version” of an elementary school principal sending a kindergartener home for pointing his index finger at a classmate and saying “Bang!”  That principal would be over-reacting and Virtue Signaling; and so were the “tennis mavens”.

Meanwhile, in another corner of the tennis-world, the tennis coach at UNC-Charlotte recently resigned his position “to pursue a new career opportunity”.  The resignation came only a couple of weeks before the intercollegiate tennis season was to begin and the press reports in the Charlotte Observer did not elaborate on the specifics of the “new career opportunity”.  The paper did report, however, a few other things that may have a bearing on the coach’s decision:

1. His record at UNC-Charlotte was 34-44 over a 3-year span.  I am not suggesting here that he was nudged out the door, but with that record, I don’t think the Athletic Director lost a lot of sleep while pondering how to maintain the tradition of the tennis program at the school.
2. The coach is the subject of a defamation lawsuit bright against him by one of his former players who alleges that he was kicked off the team by the coach after the coach fabricated a story/situation that accused the player of bullying one of his teammates.
3. The lawsuit also alleges that the coach was in fact the bully and that he engaged in several incidents of “improper behavior”.

Here is a link to the story in the Charlotte Observer.

In the past, I have banged on Florida baseball fans in Tampa and in Miami for not supporting MLB teams in their area.  Lest anyone suspect that I harbor some deep inner-hatred for Floridians, allow me to bang on the baseball fans in the Washington DC area right now.  Please recall, these are the fans who – according to local legend – yearned for the return of baseball for 35 years after the second incarnation of the Washington Senators left town due to lack of fan support.  With that local legend out there, let’s look at some data:

• The Washington Nationals have been over .500 every year since 2012.
• The Washington Nationals have won the NL East 4 times since 2012.
• Notwithstanding the on-field success of the Nats, their attendance in 2019 is embarrassing – or at least contradicts the “local legend”.

Far too much has been made of the league-wide drop in attendance for MLB games in 2019.  In fact, the average game in MLB in 2019 draws 404 fewer fans than the average game did in 2018 up to this part of the season.  However, in Washington – where the team has been on fire since June 1^st and where the team is in the midst of a division race and a wildcard race – the average attendance this year is down 3,929 fans per game.  That is not quite 10 times the average loss in attendance for MLB.  For the record, the only NL team with a larger attendance decline from 2018 to 2019 is the SF Giants.

The Nats’ attendance in 2019 is down 12.3%.  The Nats give tickets away on sports radio shows every day the team plays at home; the Nats offer some tickets for $10 to games that are less appealing than some others.  And they still average only about 60% of capacity.

Monday of this week was Labor Day and the Nats hosted the Mets.  Remember, the Nats are in the middle of a pennant race and a wildcard race and the Mets are a division rival.  Attendance that day was 25,329 – which was about 2600 fans fewer than what the Nats have drawn on average in 2019.  Oh, by the way, at least 30% of the Labor Day crowd – and maybe as much as 40% of it – were Mets’ fans wearing Mets’ colors and chanting “Let’s Go Mets!”

I told you what the “local legend” is.  The “local reality” is that Washington DC is not a baseball town today and was not a baseball town when the Washington Senators were here.

Finally, let me close today with two comments from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times pertinent to baseball attendance:

“Greenland is the least densely populated nation in the world according to 24/7 Wall Street with only 0.4 people per square mile.

“In other words, it’s the Marlins Park of countries.”

And …

“University of Chicago researchers are working on a pill to treat loneliness.

“They say it’ll come in especially handy if you’re ever in the stands at a Marlins game.”

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

 

 

We celebrate Labor Day by not engaging in much labor.  I took that to heart this morning when I awoke at 0710; glanced at the clock; remembered that today was Labor Day; rolled over and went back to sleep until 0945.  Let me say that it would not be very difficult to get used to that sort of a morning routine…

When the 32 NFL teams cut down from 90 players to 53 players on the roster, thee were a few guys who stood out on the list that I thought would get picked up fairly quickly.

• RB LeSean McCoy signed with the Chiefs and reunited with Andy Reid.
• RB Wendell Smallwood signed with the Skins
• RB Charcandrick West is unsigned as of this morning – but I think he will find work,
• WR Michael Floyd is a free agent – when he signs somewhere it will be his 6^th team since 2016.
• WR Jordan Matthews is unsigned now but should find a home soon.
• TE Dwayne Allen is a good blocker and has averaged more than18 yards per catch for his career.
• DL Muhammed Wilkerson missed most of last season; don’t know his injury status.
• LB Shane Ray was a first-round pick in 2016 and is only 26 years old.
• DBs Eric Berry and Sua Cravens have an injury history.
• DB Teez Tabor was a second-round pick in 2017 and is only 23 years old.

Bob Molinaro had this item in a column last week in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:

“Long ball: The Minnesota Twins are on pace to break the MLB single-season home run record. Quick, can you name a Twins hitter? Not so easy, is it?”

I could name 4 players of the top of my head – – but that is not a lot considering that the Twins carry 40 players on their roster.  The 4 players that came quickly to mind included a pitcher, so he was not part of the Twins’ HR barrage.  Here are the 3 hitters:

1. Byron Buxton
2. Nelson Cruz
3. Jorge Polanco.

I got an email from a reader on Sunday afternoon alerting me to the fact the Carlos Zambrano is still pitching in professional baseball.  Zambrano is a relief pitcher for the Chicago Dogs in the American Association.  Zambrano is 38 years old; his last affiliation with a major league club was in 2013 when he was in the Phillies’ organization with Clearwater in the Florida League.  His ERA with the Chicago Dogs is not all that great this year; he has pitched 61 innings to an ERA of 5.16.  On a positive note, Zambrano has recorded 51 strikeouts in those 61 innings.

High school football is a very big deal in the State of Texas.  The Prosper, TX school district is about 40 miles north of Dallas.  Prosper HS sold the naming rights for its new football stadium to Children’s Health – a pediatric health care provider in Dallas.  The deal runs for 10 years and the school district will collect $250K per year making the total value here $2.5M.  Children’s Health will also provide medical personnel on the sidelines for the games.  The Prosper HS district built the stadium for a total cost of $53M; the stadium has a capacity of 12,000 seats.

Finally, I think that Dwight Perry’s comment in the Seattle Times sums up succinctly and clearly the aftermath of Indy Colts’ fans booing Andrew Luck when he announced his retirement from football:

“Indianapolis Colts fans booed their very own franchise quarterback, Andrew Luck, when word of his retirement leaked out during a preseason game.

“Just thank your lucky stars that none of these fine people were on hand in 1939 at Yankee Stadium for Lou Gehrig Day.”

Those booing fans demonstrated a lot of class in that moment; too bad it was all low class…

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

 

 

Like it or not; football season as we have known it for the past 100 years begins this week and it will run uninterruptedly through the first Sunday of February 2020.  Then, if all continues down the existing path, football season will be extended into the late Spring when XFL 2.0 commences.  The start of football season causes two things to happen here in Curmudgeon Central:

1. It causes me to compile my annual predictions for every team in the league along with those NFL coaches I think are on a hot seat for the upcoming season.  [Update:  The first draft of that opus had to be revised when Andrew Luck retired; that revision is half-done; I am on schedule to publish those predictions on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.]
2. It causes me to institute weekly rants loosely labeled as Football Fridays – notwithstanding the annual objection I get from one former colleague who lobbies for Tennis Tuesdays.

Today is the inaugural Football Friday for 2019.  For those who have hopped on this bus in the past year and for those who have erased from memory last season’s offerings, let me set a few boundary markers for what will happen here:

• First and foremost, no one should take “Friday” literally.  I know the social and travel schedule that my long-suffering wife has set up for the two of us between now and Halloween.  There could well be some weeks where there is no Football Friday; there will surely be weeks where Football Friday could fall on a Wednesday.  I am going to try to do a long football focused rant every week.
• I will follow the fortunes of Linfield College and its football season.  The reason is simple; Linfield has had a winning season in football every year since 1956.  If there is a longer streak of that kind in a team sport in the US, I am not aware of it.
• I will comment on happenings from the games in the previous week in college and NFL football.
• I will present the betting lines for interesting games in college football for the upcoming week with brief comments
• I will comment on happenings from the games in the previous week in NFL football.
• I will present the betting lines for all the NFL games for the upcoming week with brief comments.
• I will try to come up with a betting “Six-Pack” of college and NFL games each week.  There are sure to be weeks where I will not find 6 games worth putting in that Six-Pack so consider that “feature” to be a sporadic one.  [Foreshadowing:  There is no Six-Pack this week.]
• After Halloween, by which time we should be able to discern the truly awful college teams from the merely bad ones, I will begin  a count-down to name the 8 teams that I will nominate to be in my mythical SHOE Tournament which would determine the worst team in the country with play on the field.

So, that’s the outline for Football Fridays; and now, it is time to set sail on the first one.

The Linfield College Wildcats will not begin their season until 14 September.  On that Saturday, the team will have traveled from their campus in McMinnville, OR to Glassboro, NJ to take on Rowan University.  According to the computational website, WolframAlpha, that journey encompasses 2,450 miles.  As you might expect for a game involving two Division III schools, this is an out-of-conference game…

There were only 2 Division 1-A college football games last week.  In the first one, Florida rallied to beat Miami 24-20.  It was a sloppy game; the team that made the last mistake lost the game.  Nevertheless, there were some positive things for Miami to take from the game despite the “L” on their record:

• The pundits think Florida is a “Top Ten team”.  Miami was in the lead early in the 4^th quarter.
• Miami started a freshman at QB who acquitted himself nicely against a strong SEC-quality defense.  Jarren Williams was 19 – 29 for 214 yards with 1 TD and 0 INTs.
• The Miami OL does need some work.  They allowed 10 sacks in the game and 16 tackles for a loss.

The Florida OL did not cover itself in glory here either.  Florida ran the ball 27 times for a total of 52 yards.  Hey, it’s still early in the season…

In the other contest, Arizona schlepped itself all the way to Hawaii.  While points were hard to come by in the Florida/Miami game, the scoreboard in Hawaii lit up like a pinball machine.  The final score was Hawaii 45 and Arizona 38 – – and on the final play of the game, the Arizona ballcarrier was dragged down at the 1 yardline missing out on the chance to tie the game and send it to OT.  Had that happened, the game might still be going on waiting for a defensive stop by either team.

The total offense by both teams here was 1128 yards.  I suspect that both coaches told their defenses that tackling was optional for this game.

In general college football news, there was a report earlier this month that the PAC-12 was considering starting some of their games at 9:00 AM on the west coast so that those games would be televised at noon on the east coast.  The idea was to get PAC-12 teams in front of more eyeballs that way.  Bob Molinaro had this comment in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot to sum up where that idea stands:

“Out West: Smart: The Pac-12 has decided not to start any football games at 9 a.m. Pacific Time. Dumb: The conference will continue to explore the idea for 2020.”

That sums it up perfectly…

I want to offer up a proposition wager here.  What will be the date on which there is the first seriously reported rumor about Urban Meyer returning to college football coaching?

• I say it will be October 20.  Are you going Sooner or Later?

Utah State’s football coach, Gary Andersen, has seen his career circle back on itself.  Back in 2012, he led Utah State to an 11-2 record and the team was ranked #16 in the country in the AP poll.  That got him the job at Wisconsin where his teams went 19-7 in his two years there.  He resigned from Wisconsin to take the job at Oregon State complaining that the academic admissions restrictions at Wisconsin made it very difficult to compete with other Big 10 schools.

Andersen spent 2.5 seasons at Oregon State and the results were awful.  Overall his teams went 7-23; even less impressive was the record of 3-18 against PAC-12 opponents.  He was fired in the middle of the 2017 season and he spent last year as the associate head coach at Utah.  Now, he has gone back to Utah State where it all began…

Games of Interest:

This week the rest of the college football teams swing into action.  We all should know that pre-season polls in college football – – and college basketball – – are generally worthless except to give a landscape view of teams we should expect to be pretty good as opposed to the rest of the teams in the country.  Since I cannot pretend to have studied the 130 Division 1-A teams in depth to have some personal insight into which teams will be good and which will be “disappointing”, I will have to focus to some extent on the worthless pre-season polling results.

I said above that some of the Football Fridays this year should not be taken literally.  This is one of them.  I am writing this on Thursday morning because I will be traveling later today to visit relatives.  I will have the opportunity to post this rant on Friday morning but would not have nearly the amount of time it would take to write it from scratch.  Since that is the case, I will not be able to mention anything about the Clemson/Georgia Tech game from Thursday night or about the Utah/BYU game – The Holy War – also from Thursday night.  More than likely, I will be commenting on them when I do next week’s Football Friday which will also be done earlier in the week than on Friday.

(Fri Nite) UMass at Rutgers – 16 (55):  This game is interesting because Rutgers is favored by more than 2 TDs; that happens about as often as a Sasquatch sighting in Times Square.  The spread opened at 10 points and has been rising steadily to this level.  This spread also points to a possible suggestion for the good folks who run the University of Massachusetts:

• Perhaps you might consider abandoning Division 1-A college football and dropping down a notch?

Florida Atlantic at Ohio St. – 27.5 (63.5):  Ohio St. is ranked #5 in the pre-season polling; FAU is not mentioned.  This should be an organized ass-kicking…

South Alabama at Nebraska – 36 (66):  The best comment I saw leading up to this game came from humor-writer, Brad Dickson:

“To prepare to face South Alabama in the season opener the Husker football team is watching lots of film – mostly of the movie ‘Deliverance.’”

Akron at Illinois – 18 (51):  Yes, I know that this is a MAC team going on the road to play a big 10 team – – but Illinois is giving 18 points?

South Carolina – 10.5 at North Carolina (63.5):  The spread opened at 7.5 points and has been rising steadily all week.  Welcome back to the sidelines, Mack Brown…

Duke at Alabama – 33.5 (57.5):  Alabama is ranked #2 in the pre-season polls.  This should be another organized ass-kicking.

Northwestern at Stanford – 6 (47.5):  Almost assuredly the Division 1-A this week with the highest total SAT scores in the starting lineups.

Boise St. at Florida State – 4.5 (51.5):  If the Seminoles lose this one badly at home, Willie Taggert would be well advised to hire a food taster.

Middle Tennessee St. at Michigan – 34 (54):  The Wolverines are ranked behind Ohio St right now; if they want to catch Ohio St. in the polls prior to playing them late in the season, they will have to run up some big victory margins.  It begins here…

Georgia Southern at LSU – 27.5 (52):  Some folks think LSU is a dark horse team to make the CFP in January.  I don’t think so, but they should win this handily in Baton Rouge.

Georgia – 22 at Vandy (58):  Georgia is ranked #3 in the preseason polls, but this game is on the road against a team played good defense last year.  That line may be fat…

Oregon at Auburn – 3.5 (56):  Oregon will contend in the PAC-12 North and they have a Heisman candidate at QB in Justin Herbert.  Auburn will play a better brand of defense than Oregon is used to seeing in the PAC-12.  Maybe this is the most interesting game of the week?

Sam Houston St. at New Mexico – 9 (62.5):  Not to worry, Bob Davie will have his team safely in their hotel rooms the night before this home game.

(Sun Nite) Houston at Oklahoma – 23 (79.5):  The Sooners are ranked #4 in the pre-season polls.  One burning question is whether Jalen Hurts can make it three consecutive Heisman trophies for OU QBs under Lincoln Riley.  If so, it starts here…

(Mon Nite) Notre Dame – 20 at Louisville (54.5):  The Irish ran the table last year winning 12 in a row until losing in the CFP to eventual national champion, Clemson.  Can they do something like that again this year?

There are no NFL games this weekend other than the last of the meaningless Exhibition Games where the single best outcome for all 32 teams is to leave the field with no injuries to players the clubs intended to keep on their 53-man roster.   Given the lack of any real NFL action and the few games at the college level with any real betting interest, there will be no Six-Pack this week.

Finally, here is a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“The World Orienteering Championships end today in Norway. Are eliminated teams said to be dis-oriented?”

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

 

 

“Boogie” Cousins had a reputation as a hothead.  He earned every bit of that reputation with his volatile behaviors on the basketball court in the early years of his NBA career.  A few years ago, stories began to emerge that Cousins was mellowing with his advancing age – – he is 29 years old as of this morning – – and that he intended to erase that sort of image from people’s minds.  About a year ago, he asked the press to stop referring to him as “Boogie” and to refer to him by his given name, DeMarcus Cousins.  That was generally interpreted as another step in the maturation process and the mellowing of Messr. Cousins.

Over the weekend, a story hit the wires alleging that Cousins threatened to kill the mother of his son.  The allegation was not that he made this threat back in the days when he was seen as an immature hothead; the allegation is that he did it last week.  The short form of the allegation is this:

• Cousins had a son with a former girlfriend named Christy West.  Evidently, she has custody of that child.
• Cousins now has a new girlfriend named Morgan Lang and a wedding between Cousins and Lang was imminent.
• Cousins wanted his son to attend the wedding and evidently Ms. West was not cooperating.
• In a phone conversation between Cousins and West – that was somehow recorded and found its way into the hands of TMZ – Cousins appears to tell West that he would “put a bullet through” her “[bleeping] head”.

I have no way of knowing if indeed the recording cited here is real or concocted nor do I have any way of knowing if the voice on that recording is indeed Cousins’ voice.  Given the general subject of this conversation as alleged, it would be a stretch to think that someone other than Cousins would make such a threat – – but there is a lot of verification and authentication that needs to happen here before this can be held up as “stone cold truth”.

One aspect of the revelation from TMZ that caused me to raise an eyebrow – – as a homage to Mr. Spock while trying to unravel this situation – – is that the recording is only 22 seconds long and yet it contains this “very juicy tidbit”.  The transcript of this recording begins in medias res with the male voice saying:

“I’m gonna ask you this one more time before I take it to another level.”

I infer from that beginning that there was likely some prior conversation leading up to this exchange.  It also occurs to me that there could have been editing or manipulation of this recording; and so, forensic analysis of the recording itself needs to happen quickly.

The criminal aspects of these allegations will likely not be resolved in short order, but one thing is pretty clear to me.  DeMarcus “Boogie” Cousins’ attempt to appear as a mature and level-headed adult took on serious water with this revelation.  In the court of public opinion – where the standard of proof is far less than “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt”, Cousins’ image has been damaged.

In many parts of the country, college football is the dominant element of social interaction.  This is clearly the case in Nebraska where the attendance at a typical Husker home game in Lincoln is between 85,000 and 90,000 folks.  To put that in perspective, the US Census lists 445 cities in the State of Nebraska.  Only 2 of those 445 cities (Lincoln and Omaha) have populations greater than 85,000.  The third largest city in Nebraska is Bellevue, NE with a population of 53.6K

Brad Dickson resides in Omaha; he is a former humor writer for The Tonight Show and for the Omaha World-Herald.  He just posted a satirical piece where he does a head-to-head comparison between Nebraska football coach, Scott Frost, and some of the giants of history such as George Washington, Ben Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, Mother Teresa and Jesus Christ.  The object(s) of his satire are the local sportswriters and broadcasters whose adulation for Scott Frost – and his wunderkind QB, Adrian Martinez – seemingly has no limit.

Here is a link to that satirical piece.  It is worth your time to read it simply because it is so far over the top that it will put some of the fanboy commentary and behavior into perspective as the 2019 college football season begins in earnest this weekend.

You must have heard about – and probably you have seen the video of – Carli Lloyd kicking a 55-yard field goal during/after a joint practice between the Ravens and the Eagles.  An unidentified NFL team supposedly offered Lloyd the opportunity to place kick in the Week 3 Exhibition Games, but she declined that offer.  Now the story is that she will work with a kicking coach – she needs to cut down the number of steps she took in that 55-yard attempt you saw in the video – and check to see if she can sign on with an NFL team sometime in the future.  According to one report I read, she can also punt a football more than 50 yards.

It will be interesting to see which coaches might want to have Carli Lloyd as part of their training camp – – let alone as part of their team.  I am not worried in the least about “the rough-and-tumble locker room” or the “shower/dressing privacy issues”; those things can be handled with a minor bit of of effort.  However, coaches hate those “dreaded distractions” and if Carli Lloyd is wearing a team’s uniform, she will create distractions every day.

She will be the focus of media attention by the people covering the home team AND by the people covering all the opposing teams AND by all the folks who cover the NFL at a cosmic level.  Note that I have not mentioned every feature magazine and woman-focused magazine and …  Like the other “problems” that might be caused by having a woman on an NFL team, these distractions can be managed.  However, coaches just hate to have them happen in the first place and so I wonder which coaches might entertain bringing such a distraction into the OTAs – – let alone Training Camp.  This could be interesting to see…

Finally, having related some of the fervor that grips college football fans in parts of the country today, consider this revelation by Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“Not that we’ve been getting overinundated with college-football hype or anything, but just woke up in a cold sweat from a dream that Trump University was playing Electoral College.”

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

 

 

Anyone who has been a reader of these rants for a while now will recall my completely negative reaction to the academic fraud that was perpetrated at UNC where athletes were steered to sham courses where they would get high grades to remain academically eligible.  Those courses never met and required next to nothing in terms of “educational activity”; many such courses were created and perpetuated for about 20 years in one academic department and the head of that department left UNC once the existence of those sham courses came to light.

The NCAA huffed and puffed and presented UNC with no sanction other than the public opprobrium it brought on itself.  Moreover, to make matters worse, the NCAA and its members chose not to institute new rules that might prevent such an occurrence in the future at UNC and/or any other member school.  That action ought to tell you all you need to know about the concern that schools and the NCAA have for the “student” part of their favorite piece of word gymnastics, “student-athlete”.

And now we have a situation wherein the NCAA action seemingly is disproportionate when it comes to sanctioning another school for what it calls “academic misconduct”.  Even its own label points to the fact that what happened at Mississippi State in this matter is less serious than what took place at UNC.  Let me review the bidding here:

• A student at Mississippi State was hired by the Athletic Department as a tutor for athletes at the school.
• That tutor did some of the assigned work for 11 athletes at Mississippi State in an “online general chemistry course”, took some of the exams for the students and in a couple of cases did virtually all the work in the course for the student-athletes.
• Based on investigations by the school and by the NVAA, it was determined that this “misconduct” allowed Mississippi St. to use ineligible athletes in various games.  Hence there needs to be “sanction”.

Let me be clear.  What happened at Mississippi state is wrong; it should be called out and punished here and at any other college/university where it takes place.  At the same time, keep in mind the UNC situation as a comparison piece.

• This action was perpetrated by a student hired by the Athletic Department; the UNC situation involved faculty members and academic departments in conjunction with the Athletic Department and its personnel.
• This action involved a total of 11 student-athletes (10 football players and 1 basketball player); the UNC situation involved hundreds of students and student-athletes over about a 20-year period.

Recalling that the sanctions in the UNC case amounted to not much more than having the NCAA wag its finger angrily at the UNC Athletic Department, here are some – but not all – of the punishments for Mississippi state:

• A fine equal to 1% of the annual budget for football and men’s basketball at Mississippi St.  [Aside:  I presume that some of the offices on mahogany row at NCAA HQs need new furnishings…]
• The football program loses 4 scholarships; the basketball program loses 1 scholarship.
• Reductions in the number of allowable recruiting visits to the Mississippi St. campus for football and basketball over the next couple of years.
• Three years’ probation.

Oh, and by the way the Athletic Department also has to part company with the tutor they hired who set all this in motion and that person now has a 10-year “show-cause order” meaning that if any other NCAA Athletic Department wants to hire him in that period, the school has to “show cause” regarding why he is the selected candidate for a job there and the NCAA can then approve that request or inform the hiring school of penalties it will face if the hiring is consummated.

I have no problem at all with what the NCAA did in this matter.  It is the lack of proportionality when compared to the entirety of the UNC academic fraud that I find offensive.

There is another situation developing involving big-time NCAA football that could become a hot mess.  A former team physician at Penn State has filed suit against the school and against football coach James Franklin and against the Athletic Director, Sandy Barbour et.al. for firing him as the team physician.  Normally, that would be an issue for a civil court to resolve or for the parties to accommodate one another with some sort of settlement and it would go no further than that.  However, in this case, Dr. Scott Lynch asserts in his lawsuit that coach Franklin ordered players who were still not recovered from injuries back onto the field.  Dr. Lynch reported that information and he asserts that his firing is retaliation for that reporting.

In addition to medical matters I would have no way to understand, this matter will also pivot on various NCAA and Big 10 Conference rules and regulations that pertain to injuries to athletes and their treatment for those injuries.  The thing that puts this matter higher on the food chain than it would have been 10 years ago is the heightened focus we have on player safety when it comes to football.  This could get very messy…

Finally, since I spent some time on the subject of college academics today, consider this entry in The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Catatonic:  A state of extreme stupor.  Most commonly seen in college freshmen taking classes with titles like ‘Introduction to Semiotics’, the condition is also prevalent among local news anchorpersons in the smaller markets.”

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

 

 

Congratulations to the Louisiana team that won the Little League World Series.  The final game was a shutout of a team from Curacao that had been an offensive force majeure during the tournament.  As the Little League World Series was getting underway, there was a typically snarky headline in The Onion regarding the event:

• “Report: Little League Pitchers Could Avoid Overtaxing Their Arms By, You Know, Getting Somebody Out.” 

Last week, Baker Mayfield was quoted in a Vanity Fair piece saying that he was shocked that the NY Giants had picked Daniel Jones at #6 in the Draft last April.  He said that teams “overthink” this stuff and that teams just have to realize that what matters is that players win on the field.  Daniel Jones’ record at Duke was sub-.500.  Let me submit that his reasoning is flawed just a tad here when you realize that:

1. John Elway lost more games than he won at Stanford.  Elway turned out to be a pretty good NFL QB.
2. Patrick Mahomes lost more games than he won at Texas Tech.  I guess the Chiefs are deep into regret that they wasted a first-round pick on him.

Memo to Baker Mayfield:  Play QB and lead your team.  You can be an ESPN Draft Analyst and replace Mel Kiper, Jr. after you retire.

Back in May, Suffolk Downs ceased to host any more live horse racing; the track will shut down completely in October; the land will be developed as apartments in East Boston.  However, there is a nascent plan to build a new racetrack complex in Wareham in southeastern Massachusetts.  A developer there has floated the idea of a modern racetrack with plenty of accoutrements:

• A “multi-faceted gaming and entertainment facility with multiple restaurants”.  The shorter version of that entity is “A Casino”.
• A new baseball park for the Wareham Gatemen in the Cape Cod League
• A new hotel
• A sports field complex

The total cost for this development would be about $300M.  The inability of Suffolk Downs to survive demonstrates that the proposed new track is not the economic engine that would make this a profitable undertaking.  Clearly, this proposal hinges entirely on obtaining an approval for that casino facility at this locale.  If the casino there is given a green light, then live horse racing in the Boston area may come back to life.

As the college football season starts to roll, there is an interesting situation at the University of New Mexico.  Last year, as a way to save some money, the Athletic Department decided that it would stop having the team stay at a local hotel the night before home games.  That makes sense; New Mexico is not one of the nation’s “football factories” where the team and the Athletic Department are rolling in dough.  This year, they have decided to go back to the idea of housing the team in a hotel before home games – and the reasoning seems a tad “loose”.

Back in May a New Mexico baseball player was fatally shot outside a local club; soon after that, Coach Bob Davie used “player safety” as the argument to go back to housing the team in a hotel the night before home games.  According to a report in the Albuquerque Journal, Davie’s pitch included:

“Not that we can have all 110 kids at the hotel; we only take the travel team (up to 70 players).  But that is a dangerous, dangerous thing to be not keeping a college football team in a hotel the night before a game … We were being reckless; we were putting people in harm’s way.”

Never let it be said that I come down against the idea of “player safety”, but the logic here is a bit thin.

• First, if safety is the paramount concern, why have only 70 players in that hotel.  Doesn’t it matter that the ones staying on campus are also “in harm’s way”?
• Second, why are players in greater danger the night before a home football game staying in their dorms or apartments than they are on any other random night during football season?
• Third, the baseball player who was killed was shot outside a night club.  Is Coach Davie worried that his team does not have the discipline to get some sleep the night before a game and stay away from night clubs?

It is of little import to me where the New Mexico football team lays itself down to sleep the night before a football game.  I don’t even care if they pitch tents out in the desert and commune with nature sprites the night before a football game.  However, I do mind being fed a “player safety malarkey cake” as the reason that the school must bear this expense.  Just call this what it is; this is a much more convenient situation for the coaching staff at New Mexico.  That is the reason that many – if not most – Division 1-A teams do exactly the same thing.

Finally, here is an observation from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times pertaining to college football:

“We needed a full-blown Princeton Review study to determine that Wisconsin is the top college for drinking beer?

“Five minutes in the Camp Randall stands at a Badgers football game could’ve told you that.”

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

 

 

Brad Rock is someone I frequently quote and cite here as a sports columnist at the Deseret News in Salt Lake City.  He has been a sports columnist there since 1994 and the paper announced his retirement over the weekend.

Bonne chance, good sir.  Thank you for all your contributions to these rants – – and I still have a few in the inventory on my clipboard.  Be well; and stay well.

A Tweet from Adam Schefter on Saturday got this reaction from me:

• Holy “Shock and Awe”, Batman!

Andrew Luck is retiring from the NFL at age 29 due to a series of injuries that have led him to stop loving to play football.  I will not pretend to have ever been a football player, but it does seem to me that unless one really likes to play that game, it is not something that one would choose to do as a livelihood.  The game is difficult; it is painful; and, it potentially leaves some long-lasting scars on its practitioners at the NFL level.

Luck missed an entire season with a shoulder injury and has not been able to practice much this year with what have been reported as a “calf injury” and/or a “bone injury” in the ankle area.  This cannot be spun to be “good news” for Colts’ fans; the team has a solid and balanced roster that many thought could have been led deep into the playoffs.  Jacoby Brisset will stand in for Luck in 2019; I do not mean to denigrate Jacoby Brisset in any way; he has shown the ability to be a solid NFL QB.  Having said that, he is still – and may always be – several steps down from Andrew Luck’s stature as an elite NFL QB when healthy.

Perhaps the final shoe in this matter has not dropped yet.  Perhaps this retirement announcement will have serious repercussions throughout the broad landscape of football in the US – – such as:

• Can or will the Colts consider trading for a more experienced QB than Brisset?  The roster may be ready to “win now” – – but is it too late to bring in another QB to run this team in 2019?
• By the same token, this roster is probably too good – and too balanced – to effect a “tanking operation” in order to have a shot at one of the top QBs in next year’s draft.  Or is it?
• What sorts of agony must be felt by all those fantasy football players whose leagues have already had their drafts and someone in the league used a high pick to take Andrew Luck?

I’ll pretend here to be a card-carrying millennial here despite having been born in the middle of WW II as opposed to being born in the walk-up to Desert Storm.  In order to do that, I’ll have to shriek that this “Andrew Luck announcement” is all about me.

• I had written a first draft of my picks for the records for all 32 NFL teams – pending injuries in the final 2 Exhibition Games – and had the Colts winning the AFC South on the assumption that Andrew Luck would have been “good-to-go” once the games counted.
• Now – – poor me – – I’ll have to go back and do a major rework of the whole AFC prognostications.  Let me bask in my victimhood here for just a moment …

By the way, Andrew Luck’s decision here puts him in some rather prestigious company.  If you consider elite NFL players who retired while still “in their prime”, he now keeps company with the likes of :

1. Jim Brown
2. Calvin Johnson
3. Barry Sanders

And now – – Andrew Luck

Switching gears … A couple of months ago, when the University of Michigan hired Juwann Howard as the head basketball coach, it strolled down a well-worn path.  Lots of coaches in college basketball wind up in charge of the team that they played for when the coach was in college.  Here are some that come to mind without even doing a Google search:

• Jim Boeheim – Syracuse – He’s been there next to forever.
• Jamie Dixon – TCU
• Patrick Ewing – Georgetown
• Penny Hardaway – Memphis
• Bob Huggins – West Virginia
• Chris Mullen – St. John’s – at least until the end of last season
• Kevin Ollie – UConn – until the commencement of a “nasty divorce”

As I had my thoughts on this theme of returning to the fold – so to speak – I also wondered what might happen in the near future when two highly successful coaches at two major schools come to an agreement with Father Time and hang up their whistles.  I am referring here to Mike Krzyzewsli (age 73 in the middle of next season) and Roy Williams (age 69 as of today).  I am not suggesting either man needs to retire or that either of them is in some sort of diminished coaching capacity.  My thinking here merely reflects a realistic look at the calendar.

Lots of former players at Duke and UNC have found themselves in the college coaching profession after graduation.  So, I started to think who might be offered the very difficult – but very tempting – task of following these highly successful coaches.

Here are some choices for the mavens at Duke – I am sure there are others:

• Tommy Amaker – currently head coach at Harvard
• Jeff Capel – currently head coach at Pitt
• Johnny Dawkins – currently head coach at UCF
• Bob Hurley – currently head coach at Arizona St.

Here are some choices for the mavens at UNC – I am sure there are others:

• Hubert Davis – currently an assistant coach at UNC
• Phil Ford – previously an assistant coach for 2 NBA teams
• Jeff Lebo – currently head coach at E. Carolina
• Jerry Stackhouse – currently head coach at Vandy

The idea of going back to one’s alma mater to coach is alluring; it is not universally successful.  Indeed, Jim Boeheim has had a great run at Syracuse, but Chris Mullen’s time at St. John’s as a coach did not nearly compare to its success when he played there.  Roy Williams never played varsity basketball at UNC – he was there during the days when freshmen were ineligible and he did play freshman basketball – so his coaching successes at UNC have far outweighed his athletic accomplishments there.  So far, Patrick Ewing’s coaching success has not come close to his playing-days’ success at Georgetown.

Adding to that mixed-bag of success stories and not-such-a-success stories, the people who replace either Roy Williams or Mike Krzyzewski will have the added burden of being next in line after a legendarily successful coach who had been at the school for next-to-forever.  Coaches who have “followed a legend” have not had anything like universal success – in college basketball or in other sports.  Consider:

• Heartley Anderson succeeded Knute Rockne at Notre Dame
• Gene Bartow succeeded John Wooden at UCLA
• Phil Bengston succeeded Vince Lombardi in Green Bay
• Terry Brennan succeeded Frank Leahy at Notre Dame
• Mike Davis succeeded Bob Knight at Indiana
• Bill Guthridge succeeded Dean Smith at UNC
• Ray Perkins succeeded Paul “Bear” Bryant at Alabama
• Hank Raymonds succeeded Al McGuire at Marquette

None of these “successors” were failures as coaches – – except when measured by the yardstick of the person they replaced.  The title of Thomas Wolfe’s posthumous novel provides a cautionary moment here:

• You Can’t Go Home Again

Finally, to prove that I still have some of Brad Rock’s commentary from the Deseret news in inventory, consider this comment:

“The Atlanta Hawks reportedly are keeping a spot open for 42-year-old Vince Carter if he wants it.

“They’re saying all he needs to do is prove his vertical is still higher than his age.”

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

 

 

I saw a headline this morning that must get the “Captain Obvious Award” for the week:

“James Harden blames media for him not repeating as MVP”

Since the NBA MVP is determined by a voting process where the only voters are sportswriters or sports broadcasters, it is difficult to imagine a set of circumstances when “the media” would not be responsible for the selection of a player or the selection of some different player.  Equally obvious would be the following headline:

“James Harden realizes media responsible for him being last year’s MVP”

Speaking of “the media”, I fear that yesterday was just a tad scary.  CBS Sports streamed a 6-hour program yesterday devoted entirely to Fantasy Football.  The key parts of that previous sentence are:

1. 6-hour
2. Fantasy

Even a 12-year old boy with his first access to a Victoria’s Secret catalog would find something else to do in less than 6 hours.  Can Armageddon be far off?

I got an e-mail from #2 son yesterday with the following baseball stat:

“Tony Gwynn faced Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, and Greg Maddux a combined total of 323 times. He struck out 3 times.”

Let me do some math for you here:

• Tom Glavine struck out 0.59 batters per inning for his career.
• Greg Maddux struck out 0.67 batters per inning for his career.
• Pedro Martinez struck out 1.13 batters per inning for his career.
• John Smoltz struck out 0.89 batters per inning for his career.

All four of those pitchers had long careers; those strikeout stats are not subject to “small sample size error”.  That makes the Tony Gwynn stat here even more eye-popping.

The Washington Post recently had a long-form piece on how the increasing temperatures around the world are affecting sports competitions.  The focus of the article was a race through the Mojave Desert called Running with the Devil.  However, the article devotes plenty of space to things like the Olympics to be held in Japan in mid-summer and to the World Cup in Qatar which was postponed to late in 2022 to avoid the heat in that part of the world in June/July.  Here is a link if you choose to read the piece in its entirety.

That report dovetails with a press announcement from NC State saying that the school will implement an “enhanced heat plan” for the 2019 football season.  Fans attending games in the late-summer/early-fall might need ways to stay cool in the open-air environment of Carter-Finley Stadium and the school is going to provide for heat relief in various ways to include:

• Misting stations
• Dunking stations – – ice water for towels to cool oneself
• Water bottle refilling stations
• Shade tents
• Air-conditioned buses – – medical folks can direct overheated fans to these cooling places if necessary.

Earlier this week, I mentioned that college football kicks off its season this weekend with a short slate of 2 Division 1-A games.  That means that I will be kicking off “Football Friday” next week.  I did a survey of the 2019 college football season on July 30 of this year and would like to add a few more observations as we commence the season:

• Watch out for Utah this year.  The Utes won the PAC-12 South last year despite losing their starting QB and top RB to injury for much of the year.  Those guys are back along with plenty of starters from last year’s team.
• Texas will replace 8 starters on their defense from last year.  That is probably a good thing and not a bad thing.  Last year, Texas allowed offenses to gain 5.7 yards per play.  You have to think there is room for improvement there…
• Lots of prognosticators see Florida and LSU as sleepers who might rise up and challenge Alabama and Georgia for SEC supremacy.  Check out the schedules of those two schools here and here.  If either wins the SEC Championship Game, it will not be due to a pillow-soft schedule – including a game on October 12 where the two teams square off in Baton Rouge.

Finally, I mentioned above the NC State plan to provide heat relief for fans part of which involved water bottle refilling stations.  Here is a pertinent definition from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Bottled Water:  Tap water made more palatable by a label with a mountain on it.”

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

 

 

The Baltimore Orioles’ pitching staff reached a milestone in the 127^th game of the season.  That assemblage gave up its 258^th HR for the season and that ties the record in all of MLB history for “number of HRs allowed by a team in a single season”.   Please note that there are 35 games left on the Orioles’ schedule; it is a good bet that this pitching staff will set a new standard.  In case you are wondering, the projection is that the Orioles will allow 329 HRs this year.

Rather than mock the Orioles’ staff for its inability to keep the ball in the ballpark, let me use this stat to make a serious point regarding MLB expansion.  From a fan perspective, there is a real allure to the idea that MLB might expand to 32 teams putting 16 teams in each league thereby allowing for more balanced scheduling and limited inter-league play.  From an owners’ perspective, there is the allure of humongous franchise fees to be divvied up and possibly greater TV rights fees down the road as two new markets acquire “local heroes”.

Every yin has its yang, however, and the Baltimore Orioles’ pitching staff is a great example of the “yang” here.  The Orioles are fielding the equivalent of a Triple-A pitching staff and that staff is being lit up on a nightly basis.  In addition to setting a record for HRs allowed this season, the Orioles have given up 805 runs so far this year (6.34. runs per game).  That is 68 more runs allowed than the next most forgiving pitching staff (Rockies).

Now consider that the typical MLB roster carries 12 pitchers.  If there were 2 new teams, that would create the need to find 24 more pitchers to play in the major leagues.  There are simply not enough quality pitchers available; adding two teams would be akin to adding two more “Orioles’ pitching staffs” to the major leagues.  I suggest that is not the path to the future that MLB should select.

The XFL 2.0 continues its trek to become an actual sports entity.  This week, the league announced the locations and the names of its 8 franchises:

1. Dallas Renegades
2. DC Defenders
3. Houston Roughnecks
4. LA Wildcats
5. NY Guardians
6. Seattle Dragons
7. St. Louis BattleHawks
8. Tampa Bay Vipers

The franchise placement strategy here is interesting by comparison with the late – but not lamented – AAF placement strategy.  The AAF put teams mainly in places where there was football interest but no incumbent NFL team (Birmingham, Orlando, Memphis, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego).  Note that XFL 2.0 will have 7 of its 8 teams in markets where there is an existing NFL franchise and 1 team – in St. Louis – where there was formerly an NFL team.  I am not suggesting that the viability of XFL 2.0 will hinge on where the teams are located; clearly, its survival will depend on the quality of their football product and the amount of “football interest” that remains in the viewing public after the Super Bowl.

The draft for XFL 2.0 will take place in October 2019; as of this morning, the league has exactly 1 player under contract.  That would be former Steelers’ QB, Landry Jones.  The league will play a 10-game regular season starting in February 2020 with a 2-week post-season in the Spring of 2020.  The league is conducting test games with small colleges to try out some rules it hopes to implement:

• Forward laterals allowed:  This means there can be more than one forward pass on a play, and it would seem to mean that offensive linemen behind the line of scrimmage would be eligible receivers.  I will need a tutorial by the league in the early games to understand all the implications of this rule.  [I don’t know enough to know if I like this rule or not.]
• No PATs:  After a TD, the scoring team will opt to run a play from the 2-yardline or the 5-yardline or the 10-yardline.  If successful, those tries would be worth 1, 2 or 3 points depending on the scrimmage line chosen.  [I do like this rule.]
• Speeding up the game:  There will be an official added to the crew whose job it is to place the ball ASAP to speed up play.  Players who commit procedural fouls – offside – will need to sit out a play and have a sub entered into the game.  [These rules evoke a giant “Meh! From me.]
• Timing rules:  There will be a 25-second play clock and until the time of the two-minute warning, the clock will run continuously stopping only when there is a change of possession – – which will allow for commercial breaks on the telecast.  Instant replay reviews will be 30 seconds long.  [I like the instant replay time limit; I think I will like the continuously running clock; I wonder if 25-seconds is too short for the play clock.  These are interesting.]
• Special Teams Rule Variants:  There will be no fair catches; the league here will emulate the CFL on punt returns.  There will be kickoff returns in XFL 2.0 because the proposed placement of the ball for kickoffs is the kicking team’s 15-yardline.  [I’ll reserve judgement here, if I may…]

Let the games begin …

Finally, since XFL 2.0 is trying to look at football from a different perspective, consider this Tweet from Brad Dickson regarding the use of a different perspective:

“In Texas the oldest man in the U.S. has died at 112. He attributed his long life to a daily cigar & shot of whiskey. You know, I’ve been doing this healthy living thing all wrong.”

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