Category: Daily Rants

In sports, they say that winning cures everything.  We have some evidence to support that assertion from Jacksonville.  For years, the Jags could not sell out the stadium and it was “not a good look” on TV to have the team playing in front of vast swaths of empty seats.  So, the team put tarps over about 10,000 of the seats to give the impression that the Jags were playing in front of a crowd that came closer to filling the stadium.

In the 2017 season, the Jags were much better than they had been for a decade.  The Jags won 10 games; the last time they reached double-digits in wins was 2007.  Their record won them a division title and that got them a home playoff game.  The team pulled off the tarps for that game and sold a surprising number of tix for the game given the lukewarm attendance figures from the last 10 years.  And now the Jags have announced that they will keep the tarps off for the 2018 season.  Moreover, the Jags also announced that ticket prices will go up by 10% for 2018.

The Jags remain committed to playing one of their home games in London and in 2018, they will play the Eagles there in Wembley Stadium.  That is a scheduling glitch for the Jags.  The Eagles would probably have filled EverBank Field in Jax as the reigning Super Bowl Champions.  Two other opponents scheduled to visit Jax next year are the Jets and the Skins.  Those two teams will probably not draw full houses – but they very well could in London.

Winning cures everything – – except a scheduling glitch by the NFL schedule makers…

Sonny Dykes is the head coach at SMU taking over for Chad Morris who resigned the position.  Sonny Dykes had been the head coach at Cal and La Tech prior to this job; he is considered a “passing offense guru”.  The thing that I like about Sonny Dykes is that he is the son of Spike Dykes who was the head coach at Texas Tech for almost 15 years.  Spike Dykes was one of the more colorful head coaches that I can recall.  Nowadays, when a team loses a game, the head coach will go the lectern and say that he is proud of the way his team competed and how they showed resilience in the face of adversity.  Everyone will go back to work tomorrow and “get better”.  That was not Spike Dykes; when his Texas Tech team laid an egg, here are some of the things that he said about the team and the game:

“We played like three tons of buzzard puke out there today.”

And …

“They whipped us like a tied-up goat.”

And …

“We just weren’t productive; that’s because when you have five turnovers, miss two field goals and get another one blocked; my gosh, that’s enough to choke a mule.”

And …

“They say you lose 10 percent of your fan base every year. And I’ve been here 11 years, so you do the math.”

I can only hope that Sonny Dykes takes up his father’s mantle as a colorful football coach.  There are more than enough coaches who speak only in platitudes.

Yesterday, I watched two soccer games on FOX Sports Networks; this was the first phase of the elimination round in UAEFA Champions League.  One of the things that the commentators mentioned several times was that the World Cup Tournament in Russia was set to begin in 4 months.  The US will not be part of that Tournament having missed out on qualifying when it lost to Trinidad and Tobago last Fall.  Many commentators have said that this will be a setback for “growing soccer” in the US and they are probably right.  However, other commentators have pointed out that the failure of the US to qualify is also a blow to the Russian economy.  Here’s why:

• The Russian government is spending about $12B to stage the World Cup.  That is a pittance when compared to the more than $50B it spent to stage the Winter Olympics at Sochi in 2014, but $12B is not a trivial expenditure.
• In recent World Cup Tournaments, Americans were well represented in the cadre of new tourists coming to see the games.  With the US out of the tournament, it is likely that the American “representation” will be much smaller.  The estimate for the number of Americans who went to Brazil for the World Cup in 2014 is 100,000.
• Americans are also spenders as tourists.  When the US team was eliminated from qualifying, that slot went to Panama.  It is highly unlikely that Panamanians will travel to Russia in numbers equivalent to US tourists or that Panamanians will spend the same amount of money once they are in Russia.

Another country that did not qualify for this year’s World Cup is The Netherlands.  That is a bit surprising because The Netherlands finished 3^rd in the World Cup in 2014 and finished 2^nd in the World Cup in 2010.

Finally, since I was talking about soccer, let me close with this comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“Soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo may leave Real Madrid after being accused of tax evasion by Spanish authorities. Surprised Real Madrid fans haven’t started a GoFundMe to pay what he owes.”

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

 

 

For the simple reason that I do not know much of anything about the Winter Olympic events nor anything deeper than the names of a few of the US athletes in the games, I will not be providing you with any commentary or analysis on the games.  Simply for the purpose of keeping you somewhat up to date about these events, let me provide you with a few comments by Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald:

“The biathlon event involves shooting a gun. Just so there’s no misunderstanding, can we move that as far away from the North Korean border as possible?”

And …

“To cover figure skating we assigned our skating expert: an employee who once slipped on the ice in front of the building.  You think that’s bad, The World-Herald luge expert is a guy who got a sled from Santa when he was 9.”

And …

“The easiest job in the world is figure skating analyst. You can just make it up and no one will know. ‘He completed a quadruple Huckleberry followed by a Reverse Rodman!’”

And …

“The four-man bobsled features people holding on for dear life as they plunge down an icy track. Or, as we call that in Omaha during winter , ‘carpool’.”

Now that you are up to speed – so to speak – on the events in PeyongChang, let me turn to a much more serious topic.  Reuben Foster is a very talented young linebacker for the Niners; let me just say that he has not been a “model citizen” for all his adult life.

• Two years ago, Foster was present – but not involved – in an incident involving firearms that left three people dead.
• At the NFL Combine last year it was announced that he had “failed a drug test” and he was sent home.  Later it came out that Foster submitted a diluted urine sample to the testers at the Combine.
• About a month ago, he was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana.  Since the diluted urine sample counts as a “failed test” in the NFL taxonomy, this could mean even stricter monitoring of Foster in the league’s substance abuse protocol.
• Over the weekend, Foster was arrested again in an incident that involved domestic violence and an assault rifle.

Please note; those last two events are arrests; there has been no legal disposition of those matters.  Notwithstanding Foster’s presumed innocence, he faces liability in the court of public opinion where there is no such thing as “due process” and “innocent until proven guilty”.  Possession of marijuana has faded in significance in the court of public opinion in recent time; however, “domestic violence” and “assault rifles” are hot button issues and the emotions they arouse in the general public in February 2018 are not remotely positive.

Reuben Foster’s career may be on a knife edge here.  The NFL is likely to be handing him suspension time with reinstatement contingent on completing some therapy.  The Niners may be in a very delicate situation here.  Not long ago, they had to deal with Aldon Smith and his issues with DUI arrests, assault weapon charges and a hit-and-run incident.  Not too many years ago, the Niners also had to deal with Ray McDonald and his issues with alleged sexual assault, domestic violence and child endangerment.  The Niners are in a precarious place regarding the way they deal with Reuben Foster.

My guess is that if Foster is not convicted of some heinous action, he will be back in the NFL because he is – as I said above – a very talented young linebacker.  I recognize that he is an adult and is fully within his rights to live his life the way he wants to live it; but if the Niners want to keep him in their family for a long career, I suggest that John Lynch go and read Homer’s Odyssey.  There is a character there named Mentor; he is charged by Odysseus to be the teacher and guardian of Telemachus – Odysseus’ young son.  Mentor’s job was to teach Telemachus how to be a leader and how to be a king.  Reuben Foster needs a mentor (small “m”) who takes on a task similar to the one that Mentor (capital “M”) took on.  I don’t think this is going to be easy…

As NFL free agency approaches, one of the staples for football writers has been to opine about how the half-dozen or so teams that desperately need a QB are going to resolve that issue.  The pundits round up the usual suspects for these articles such as:

• Bills
• Broncos
• Browns
• Cards
• Jets
• Vikes

I read something over the weekend at spotrac.com that makes me think there is another team that might have a QB quandary on its hands.  Consider the Baltimore Ravens…

• Joe Flacco is signed through 2021 but there is a buyout provision that might kick in at the close of the 2019 season.
• In the next two years (2018 and 2019) Flacco will consume $51.25M in cap room.
• In 2017, Flacco threw for 18 TDs and threw 13 INTs.  His yards per attempt was only 5.7 yards and his total yardage was only 3141.

I think that John Harbaugh and the Ravens’ FO have some serious thinking to do.

Finally, since I started today with some observations by Brad Dickson in the Omaha-World-Herald, let me close with one more:

“Police in Sunrise, Florida, caught Jets receiver Robby Anderson going 105 mph in a 45 zone. He stuck out because the average resident of Sunrise drives 6 mph in a 45 zone.”

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

 

 

Over the weekend, Yu Darvish signed a 6-year deal with the Chicago Cubs; reports say the deal is worth $126M with incentives that can raise the deal to $150M.  A report this morning at CBSSports.com says that Jake Arietta turned down a similar deal offered by the Cubs.  Since Arietta has been with the Cubs for the last 3 seasons, it is interesting to compare the two pitchers:

• Yu Darvish is 31 years old and will turn 32 in August.  He has been a durable starter averaging 26 starts per season.  His career ERA is 3.42 and he averages a bit over 200 strikeouts per season.
• Jake Arietta is 31 years old and will turn 32 in March.  He too has been a durable starter averaging 26 starts per season.  His career ERA is 3.57 and he averages about 130 strikeouts per season.  He won the Cy Young award in 2015.  He has also – mysteriously – led the NL in wild pitches in 2016 and in 2017.

Neither Darvish nor Arietta had his best season in 2017, but neither had a bad season in 2017.  Looking at history, these two pitchers on average are very similar; it is not surprising that a GM devoted to analytics would “assign” them relatively equal values.  Because of the similarity of their career records, it may be that the Darvish contract sets the general parameters for deals that may be extended to Arietta as the bidding for free agent pitchers comes down to the wire.  Of course, it will behoove Arietta’s agent to get him something more than what is in the Darvish deal if only as a face-saving gesture; but I would not look for Arietta to be getting any offers either 10% higher in salary per year or much longer than 6 years.  [For the record, I think 6 years is the longest contract I would offer to a 31-year old starting pitcher – – and yes, I have heard of Nolan Ryan.]

There was a report last week that LeBron James could be added to the Golden State Warriors team adding to the speculation as to where James will ply his trade next season.  I do not pretend to understand the nuances of the NBA’s soft salary cap, but I will go along with the idea that it can happen financially.  I also have no insight into the LeBron James master plan for the remainder of his career.  I do want to say this about that rumor/report however:

• If the Warriors actually add LeBron James to their roster, the NBA can abandon any pretense it has that its regular season means anything AND that its playoffs short of the Conference Finals and the NBA Finals mean anything.

For years, we have heard leagues wring their hands over “the integrity of the game(s)” and how said “integrity” is the foundation of their enterprise and the cornerstone of fan interest.  That is true.  Here is something else that is true:

• There must be some semblance of competitive balance in that league.  If the Harlem Globetrotters played 41 games in one city against the Washington Generals, the interest in those games would drop to zero after about the 5^th game because everyone knows what happens when the final buzzer goes off.

Let me be clear.  I do not give a fig where LeBron James plays next year; he could start his own NBA franchise on the moon for all I care.  [Elon Musk can be his “transportation partner” …]  However, if the Warriors can put a starting five on the court of Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Draymond Green, LeBron James and Klay Thompson, I will ignore any and all NBA games until the Conference Finals.

Mentioning LeBron James naturally makes me think of the Cleveland Cavaliers who totally redid their roster at the trade deadline last week.  So, here is a question for you:

• Suppose you were commissioned to write the history of the Cleveland Cavaliers as a franchise.  How would you handle the Isaiah Thomas Era there?

I read a report over the weekend that in the Olympic Village in PeyongChang there are 110,000 condoms to be given out “as needed”.  That leads me to ask two questions:

1. Does the IOC have a corporate partner providing these condoms and do the condoms have the Olympic logo with the 5 rings on the packages?
2. How badly do the NBC execs wish they could televise on one of their cable outlets some of the “events” where those condoms play a strategic role?

Speaking of the Olympics – sort of – it should not surprise any regular readers that I am not glued to my TV watching hours and hours of Olympic coverage.  I did tune in briefly over the weekend; and in the “studio summary of the day’s events”, I found myself waiting for NBC to cut to a shot of Bob Costas sitting in a chair at a ¾ angle to the camera opining on the meaning of something that happened in PeyongChang.  Mike Tirico is doing a fine job as the major domo of the coverage; I do not mean to throw shade on him at all.  However, for me, something is missing from the telecast…

There was a report last week that the father of one of Dr. Larry Nassar’s victims tried – unsuccessfully – to attack Nasser in the courtroom while victim statements were being presented to the judge.  Intellectually, I know that is the wrong thing to do.  I do not have any daughters, but I do have a granddaughter; and if Dr. Nassar had done to her what he has done to other young girls, I am not sure that I would have been able to attend that hearing and behave in the way that I know is correct and proper.  There is in the recesses of my reptilian brain stem a feeling that wants me to say to that father:

• I understand.  I only wish you had a better attack plan.

Finally, consider please, this comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“Someone stole the 7-foot unicycle belonging to Red Panda, a popular basketball halftime show performer. Here’s one police chase I wouldn’t mind seeing.”

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

 

 

Yesterday afternoon, there were several reports related to a Tweet posted by Tony Dungy saying that what Josh McDaniels had done to the Colts and to the assistant coaches that the Colts had hired in anticipation of his being the head coach in Indy was “indefensible”.  Tony Dungy can Tweet whatever he wants, but using his Tweet as a way to post a report leads me to a question:

• Who died and made Tony Dungy the arbiter of what is proper behavior?

I thought that was Miss Manners’ job.

There is an adage that a verbal agreement is not worth the paper it is written on.  That seems eerily applicable to the McDaniels/Colts situation at hand.  I do not read minds, so I have no idea what prompted McDaniels to jilt the Colts as he did but maybe he had this question in his mind and it was part of his “problem” that led to his “indefensible” action:

• For whom and with whom would I prefer to work?  Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick or Jim Irsay and Chris Ballard?
• Take your time here…

Yesterday seemed to be a day for people to express their butthurt feelings.  MLB agents and leaders of the MLBPA cannot fathom how “bad” the free agent market is this winter.  A couple of players have talked about boycotting Spring Training; agents and union leaders mused about “collusion”; pitchers and catchers are set to report next week and some pretty good players – several represented by Scott Boras – remain unsigned.  MLBPA head honcho, Tony Clark said that the GMs and teams are engaged in a “race to the bottom” and that they are calling into question the “integrity of the games”.  Sounds pretty bad …

On a parallel track, there were reports yesterday that JD Martinez – represented by Scott Boras – is fed up with the Boston Red Sox and their intransigence.  According to reports, Martinez has a 5-year, $125M contract offer from the Red Sox but he wants a 7-year, or 8-year deal and they will not budge off the 5-year mark.  Another report said that Yu Darvish had at least one “nine-figure offer” from a team but that he and his agent were waiting to see if the Yankees or Dodgers would join the bidding.

Suddenly, I feel a little less sympathy for the unsigned players, their agents and the union honchos.  There are indeed some pretty good players who are still unsigned, but I would not classify any of them as “great players”.  Perhaps, teams and GMs have seen enough examples of what happens when players around 30 years old sign long-term contracts; often the final few years on those deals are not pretty.

1. The Angels signed Albert Pujols to a 10-year contract worth $240M when Pujols was 31.  It has 4 years left and will pay him $27M, $28M, $29M and $30M in those 4 years.  Really?
2. The Nats signed Jayson Werth to a 7-year contract worth $126M when he was 32 years old.  In the final 3 years of that deal (it ended in 2017) Werth’s batting averages were .221, .244, .226.  By the way, Jayson Werth is one of the many unsigned free agents out there …

The phrase “race to the bottom” is a favorite of union leaders in various industries.  In manufacturing, it is used to imply that companies are sending jobs to places where wages are low and workers are not represented by unions.  The usage of that phrase by the head of the MLBPA must mean something else because none of the GMs are seeking to send players elsewhere; the GMs are simply not willing to pay what players and agents think they are entitled to get paid.  Last year on Opening Day, the Houston Astros payroll for its 25 players totaled $124.3M.

• That figure is close to what the Red Sox have offered to JD Martinez for 5 years of work.
• The Houston Astros of 2017 – averaging $6M per player on Opening Day – merely won the World Series.  According to Tony Clark they also won the “race to the bottom”.

On the same day as the agents and unions were bleating about unsigned free agents, the San Francisco 49ers made a major financial commitment.  They signed Jimmy Garoppolo to a 5-year deal worth $137.5M with $74M guaranteed and a total of $90M to go into his bank account in the first 3 years.  The baseball agents would never consider a contract like this one because it is not fully guaranteed at signing.  However, the duration and the total value of Garoppolo’s deal is similar to the putative offer from the Red Sox to Boras and Martinez.  And here is why Garoppolo is worth more to the Niners than Martinez is ever going to be worth to the Red Sox:

• The Niners have been awful for several years.  They have a new stadium and fans are not going to the games.  That embarrasses the owners and – more importantly – it diminishes the revenue stream into their bank accounts.
• Jimmy G. gives the Niners hope and a measure of charisma.  He will put fannies in the seats and thereby increase revenue while – presumably – also winning more games for the team.
• The Red Sox have played to home crowds of 95% capacity or higher for each of the past 10 seasons.
• JD Martinez – nor any other free agent out there – is going to alter the Red Sox revenue stream significantly.  There are not a lot of empty seats for him to put fannies in.

Yesterday may have been a day to express butthurt in the sports world, but here in Curmudgeon Central, the crocodile tears are just not flowing…

Finally, speaking about bad contracts and things of that nature, consider this item from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times.  In some cases, it costs a lot to have people stop working for you:

“Checks, please.

“Fired Arkansas coach Bret Bielema will receive 37 monthly installments of $322,567.57 through Dec. 31, 2020 as called for his in buyout, the Hogs’ support foundation announced.

“Final score: Greenbacks $11,935,000, Razorbacks 0.”

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

 

 

Surely you know by now that Josh McDaniels backed out of whatever verbal commitment he made to the Indy Colts and will not be the Colts’ head coach next year.  The coverage of this kerfuffle has focused on potential back-room shenanigans by the Pats’ ownership and promises to McDaniels that may or may not have been made and all that sort of speculation.  Also, reported is that McDaniels’ agent has fired McDaniels taking the position in effect that he does not want to represent someone who would back out of a deal that the agent had negotiated.  How noble a gesture…

How-Evah …!  [/Stephen A. Smith] Several reports said that the agent involved here represented Josh McDaniels AND he represented Chris Ballard – the GM of the Colts who was negotiating the team’s side of the contract with McDaniels.  That means the agent represented the two principals on opposite sides of the deal.

• Can you tell me in what segment of the known universe that situation is not called a Conflict of Interest?
• I have no idea if the agent involved here is an attorney, but I strongly suspect that the Legal Canon of Ethics would preclude an attorney from representing the parties on either side of a dispute.  Plaintiff’s attorneys do not also represent defendants in civil actions against one another; I suspect that is not an accident.

About a week ago, the Browns hired Todd Haley to be their offensive coordinator.  Haley held that job with the Steelers for the last 5 years.  Last year, the Browns scored only 234 points in their 16 games (just under 15 points per game); that was the lowest points production in the league.  Moreover, the Browns have gone 1-31 in their last 32 NFL games.  I guess you would have to say that Haley has found a job situation where there is only an upside.

The Carolina Panthers’ franchise is now officially up for sale; Jerry Richardson said that would be the case once the season was over and the team has hired legal and financial advisors to effect the transaction.  Interestingly, the NFL felt it necessary to “let it be known” (by including the topic in the Commissioner’s State of the League speech just before the Super Bowl) that the league strongly preferred keeping the team in Charlotte NC.  I found that interesting because with the recent franchise shufflings in the NFL, the LA market and the Las Vegas market are now occupied, and I wonder where a new Panthers’ owner might think to move the franchise.  Consider:

• Charlotte is the 22^nd largest TV market in the US according to Nielsen.
• Only 3 larger markets do not already have NFL teams.  They are St. Louis, Sacramento-Stockton and Orlando.  St. Louis is an unlikely option; Sacramento is a sports backwater; and, putting a 4^th franchise in Florida would be truly stupid.
• Unoccupied markets similar in size to Charlotte include Raleigh-Durham (is it worth the trouble to move there?), Portland (maybe if Phil Knight was going to make an offer?), Hartford (doubt it), San Antonio (Jerry Jones’ head would explode) and Columbus (good luck competing with Ohio State there).

My guess is that the NFL simply was laying down a marker with that tidbit informing any potential bidder that he/she had best not be thinking of asking to move the franchise any time soon.  The most recent value put on the Panthers’ franchise that I can find was by Forbes about 6 months ago; they had the Panthers worth $2.1B.  Just for fun, I will set an OVER/UNDER line on the final price here:

• $2.5B – – You want OVER or UNDER?

Now that folks have digested the fact that the Eagles are the Super Bowl champions, it may be interesting to look at the financial draw that the game had on TV.  Reports say that NBC hauled in $414M in ad revenue for the game.  That does NOT include the ad revenue generated by the 6-hour pregame hootenanny.  Last year’s game brought in $419M but recall that last year’s game was an overtime game and therefore had more ad slots.  This year’s ad revenue was a Super Bowl record for a 60-minute game.  The estimate for the total revenue to include the pregame and post-game ads is north of $500M.  Not a bad day…

In case you did not keep track, there were 49-and-a-half minutes of advertisements during the game.  That means ads took up about 22% of the time from the kickoff to the launching of the confetti.  Anheuser-Busch and Fiat-Chrysler were the biggest ad buyers this year; each of them aired 4 minutes worth of commercials.

Brad Dickson had the comment about Super Bowl viewers in the Omaha World-Herald:

“Most everybody will be watching the Super Bowl. Except for ESPN executives, who plan to skip the game to rewatch some old LaVar Ball interviews.”

One more Super Bowl related “bit of tid” if you will:

• With the Eagles’ win over the Patriots last Sunday, the NFC East is the only division in the NFL in which all the teams have won a Super Bowl title.
• At the other end of that spectrum is the AFC South where only the Colts have won a Super Bowl and none of the other 3 teams have.

Finally, here are two comments from Greg Cote of the Miami Herald about marathon runners:

“Miami Marathon happened while you slept: More than 20,000 runners were expected Sunday for the annual Miami Marathon & Half Marathon, which began at the ungodly hour of 5:45 a.m. Once again I meant to compete, but an utter lack of interest and ambition got in the way.”

And …

“Former Marlins president David Samson is running seven marathons on seven continents in seven days beginning Tuesday in a continuing effort to get as far from Jeffrey Loria as he possibly can.”

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

 

 

I have mentioned here several times in the past that my educational background and professional career involved the physical sciences.  To make a point today, I need to provide a brief and simple tutorial on the physical properties of water.  We have all experienced the fact that water expands when it freezes; put a can of soda or a full plastic bottle of water in the freezer overnight and you will have a ruptured can or bottle with a frozen mass of stuff in the morning.  Water is not the only substance that behaves this way, but it is far and away the most abundant one to do so.

Now take a leap of faith here…  There is something known as the Clausius-Clapeyron Equation and the upshot of that equation is this:

• Substances that expand upon freezing also have a higher freezing point/melting point as the pressure increases on the substance.

Just trust me here; you do not want to know the derivation of the Clausius-Clapeyron Equation; in fact, the only people who really care about it at all are those who are about to take a Final Exam in a physical chemistry course.  All you need to do now is to believe me when I tell you that increasing the pressure on an ice cube will melt that ice cube as surely as increasing the temperature will melt that ice cube.

And that is the reason people can ice skate.  The area under those knife-sharp skate blades is incredibly small; the weight of the skater is supported only in that small area under the skate blades meaning the pressure in that long and thin support zone is very high.  And that increase in pressure “melts” the ice under the blade such that the skater moves along on a minuscule film of water – which refreezes as soon as the back of the skate blade moves away.

This has some marginal relevance today simply because the Winter Olympics in Korea are about to begin this weekend.  Every single event in those games is dependent on the fact that water expands on freezing and that leads to the situation where water freezes at a higher temperature when under high pressure.  Every event you will read about or see on TV would not be possible without that underlying physical principle.

Cement does not behave like water.  Imagine putting on a pair of ice skates and trying to execute a figure skating move on a cement slab.  It would not work; it would not end well for the skater.  If you enjoy any of the events taking place over the next several weeks, tip your hat to water as a substance and to Clausius and Clapeyron for explaining how and why your enjoyment came to be.

[Aside:  About the only part of the Winter Games that I can find that has nothing to do with this phenomenon is the portion of the biathlon that involves target shooting.]

Changing the subject here …  ESPN had to do a major overhaul to its announcing team on Sunday Night Baseball for 2018.  Aaron Boone had been part of the three-person announcing team for several seasons, but Boone took over as the manager of the Yankees in December.  Dan Shulman had done the play-by-play on Sunday Night Baseball for about 5 years, but he decided to step away from that job during this offseason.  [Aside:  Dan Shulman will continue to work ESPN college basketball telecasts and selected Toronto Blue Jays games on the Canadian network, Sportsnet.]

ESPN selected Matt Vasgersian to replace Shulman.  That should work just fine; both Shulman and Vasgersian are solid broadcasters who do not dominate the action of the game.   I think the more interesting ESPN replacement is Alex Rodriguez to take over for Aaron Boone.  This is interesting for two reasons:

1. A long time ago, A-Rod replaced Aaron Boone at third base for the Yankees.  Now he is replacing him in the broadcast booth; an interesting coincidence …
2. Alex Rodriguez was hardly a loveable figure for the latter part of his playing career.  I have no intention of rehashing all the negativity that surrounded him then, but in his broadcasting incarnation, A-Rod is enlightening and enjoyable.  For those who are spring-loaded to hate him for his prior actions and persona, take a deep breath and just listen to him on the microphone.  He is not the spawn of Beelzebub; he is actually pretty good as an announcer.

As of this morning, the other two members of the broadcasting team for Sunday Night Baseball – Jessica Mendoza and Buster Olney – will remain in their positions for the 2018 season.  I will spend at least some of the time early in the season listening to the new broadcast team for clues as to their longevity.  Sunday Night Baseball has had its share of turnover over the past 20 years or so – particularly in the analysts’ chairs.

An e-mail from a friend alerted me to a Division III basketball game that would surely have escaped my notice.

• Fontbonne University is a small school (about 3000 students) located in St. Louis.
• Greenville University is a small school (about 1500 students) located in Greenville, Illinois.
• Both teams participate in the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

Recently, the Fontbonne basketball team paid a visit to Greenville and I think the scoreboard operator may have suffered carpal tunnel syndrome as a result.  Here are just a few stats from the game:

• Final score was Fontbonne 164  Greenville  154  (OT)
• Teams combined to attempt 224 field goals
• Teams combined to attempt 88 3-point shots
• Teams combined to take down 126 rebounds (they missed a lot of those shots)
• Teams combined free throw shooting was 55 for 91.

This sounds as if it was the collegiate version of a game on the And-1 Tour; and yes, this is the NCAA record for most points in a basketball game.  However, this is not an outrageous outcome when you consider that Greenville has scored 140 or more points 6 times in regulation games this season.  Fontbonne has not been nearly such a scoring machine; in fact, the only two games where Fontbonne went north of 100 points were the two games against Greenville.  [The previous game in December was a win for Greenville by a score of 147-138.]  I think it is fair to surmise that Greenville spends less time in practice on defense than it does on offense…

Finally, since I mentioned the Winter Olympics at the outset today, here are two comments about the upcoming games from writers that I follow:

“NBC announced that it will air over 2,400 hours of Winter Olympics coverage. If you don’t despise mixed doubles curling at the beginning, you will by the end.”  [Brad Dickson, Omaha-World-Herald]

And …

“The ring thing: The Winter Olympics are less than a month away. It’s about time I drafted my curling fantasy league team.”  [Bob Molinaro, Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot]

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

 

 

The Eagles won their first Super Bowl championship yesterday.  As is our custom, my long-suffering wife and I attended an annual Super Bowl party in Philadelphia hosted by the individual who is the Chief Logistics Officer for the annual Las Vegas pilgrimage.  Let me simply say that there was a lot of cheering and a lot of angst that flowed during the game; at the end, the mood was beyond jubilant.

Here are a few brief comments about the game itself:

• Each offense committed one turnover and both turnovers were the result of excellent plays by the defense.  There were no giveaways in the game.
• The Eagles’ 164 yards rushing in the game allowed the Eagles to dominate the time of possession by about 9 minutes and that was a major factor in the game.
• That game should put to rest the silliness associated with the conspiracy theorists who assert that the officials always give the Pats the better end of the calls.  There were 2 Eagles’ TDs that were closely reviewed, and both stood; there was only one penalty called on the Eagles during the game that was a borderline call.  If there is some “grand conspiracy” out there, you would have to imagine that it would display itself in a tightly contested Super Bowl game – – and it did not.
• Why did the Pats keep Malcom Butler in the bench?  Even if it were some sort of disciplinary move, you would think that at halftime when it was clear that the Eagles’ offense had come to play on Sunday that the coaches would have announced that the “punishment time-out” had been served and that Butler would be in the game in the second half.
• “Bettor X” – as he came to be known – had between $4M and $5M on the Eagles on the Money Line at odds of between +160 and +170.  Conservatively, with a $4M wager at +165, he made a tidy profit of $6.6M.  He is probably as happy as any of the Eagles’ players are today.
• If Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski had hooked up on that final Hail Mary pass, it would have meant more than just another Super Bowl win for the Pats.  As he wound up to make that throw, Brady had 505 yards passing.  That completion would have been for more than 50 yards meaning that Brady would have broken the all-time passing record for yards in a game.  I don’t mean in a Super Bowl game or a playoff game; I mean any game ever.  That record has stood since September of 1951 when Norm Van Brocklin (LA Rams) threw for 554 yards in a game against the now-defunct New York Yanks.  Van Brocklin was 27 for 41 in that game and threw 5 TDs.  Note that his average yards per completion was a mere 20.6 yards…
• I do not want to throw shade on Sean McVay and the job he did as the coach of the LA Rams this year; he was the Coach of the Year and he deserved that accolade.  However, the fact that Doug Pederson only got 1 vote in the balloting for Coach of the Year tells me that some of the voters were not paying close attention to what was going on during the season.

Finally, here is a Super Bowl themed comment from Brad Rock in the Deseret News:

“’Tonight Show’ host Jimmy Fallon: ‘Pizza Hut says if either team beats the record for the fastest touchdown in the Super Bowl, it’s giving away free pizza to people in its loyalty program.

“’The only downside is you have to tell people that you’re in the Pizza Hut loyalty program’.”

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

 

 

And a Happy Groundhog’s Day to everyone…

Well, I made it.  I managed to get through two weeks of rants here since the time of the NFL Championship Games without focusing on any of the hype leading up to the Super Bowl.  There actually were things going on in the sports world more important – and even more interesting – than Bill Belichick wearing a hat or Tom Brady wearing a “special glove” [Is he the latter-day Michael Jackson?] or Doug Pederson inviting Brett Favre to address the team before the game or – – you get the idea.  So, today I will focus on the Super Bowl game and make my mythical selection.

The game will be telecast by NBC; Al Michaels, Cris Colinsworth and Michelle Tafoya will do the game as they do on Sunday nights.  That is a plus; this is the best announcing team of all the networks.  Before the game comes on, NBC will air a bit more than 6 hours of pre-game fluff and filler.  That has become standard procedure among the networks; it is total overkill but that is what they do.  I have learned to tune it out just as I have learned to tune out any and all songs done by ABBA.

I mentioned yesterday that Bob Costas will not be part of the telecast on Sunday.  With a bit of searching I learned that Liam McHugh will take his place on the broadcast.  Let me say this about Liam McHugh:

• I am confident that I could pick him out of a lineup with the Seven Dwarfs, but that pretty much exhausts my knowledge and opinion of his skills.

I do not know if you would categorize this next tidbit as happenstance or what:

• This Super Bowl will be the 4^th time Cris Colinsworth has been in the booth to do color commentary.  The Patriots have been in all 4 of those games.

Moreover, Colinsworth was part of the broadcast team when the Pats and Eagles met in the Super Bowl back in 2005.  Moving on …

NBC will deploy 106 cameras and 130 microphones to cover the game.  There will be 2 Skycams – proving once again that nothing exceeds like excess.  NBC will have the Sky cam on a cable that we have come to expect in a televised NFL game AND it will also have “High Sky” which is a TV on a cable up closer to the roof of US Bank Stadium.  I think that “innovation” rates a hearty “Whoop-di-damned-doo!!”

An average 30-second commercial spot for the game on Sunday will cost just north of $5M.  In addition to all those messages interspersed into the action, NBC will commandeer a half-dozen spots to promote the upcoming Winter Olympics in PeyongChang.  If the action in a pro football game comes at you too fast and furious, you will be pleased to learn that there will be plenty of interruptions where you can catch your breath.

The American Gaming Association (AGA) is a lobbying group for the “gaming” industry – translation “gambling” industry.  As you know, I am not opposed to gambling in any way but given the focus of this group, any data they present must be taken with the knowledge that it might be slanted/presented in such a way as to make the gaming industry’s point of view look good.  With that preamble, the AGA has estimated that there will be this much “action” on the game this year:

• Americans will bet $4.74B on Super Bowl 52.
• Of that $4.76B handle, $4.6B will be bet illegally.
• The estimated handle in legal sports wagering on this year’s game is $140M.
• By their numbers, 97% of the betting handle this year will be done “illegally”.

There have been myriad articles published in the past two weeks speculating on what might happen if Nick Foles were to have a humongous game on Sunday, lead the Eagles to a win, be named the MVP of the game and set a passing record or two.  Those reports then went on to speculate on how his presence might affect free agency in the next couple of months and where he might ply his trade next year.  There is one small “problem” with all those ruminations and speculations:

• According to Spotrac.com, Nick Foles is under contract with the Eagles for 2018.  He will earn $7M next season.
• His contract “voids” in February 2019 if he is still on the Eagles roster.  Essentially, he signed a 5-year contract that would void after 2-years as a way for the team to pro-rate his $3M signing bonus over a longer time period.

Spotrac.com is a reliable information source.  Therefore, if Nick Foles is to have an impact on this year’s free agency, it will happen because the Eagles decide to cut him after this week’s game or if they choose to trade him in the middle of the free agency frenzy.  The passage of time alone will not make Nick Foles a free agent in the Spring of 2018.

Here are two facts going into Sunday’s game that are interesting and inconsequential:

1. The “Brady-Belichick Patriots” have been to the Super Bowl 7 times.  Those teams have not scored a point in the first quarter of any of those 7 games.
2. Doug Pederson has beaten Bill Belichick in the past – but not as a coach.  In the 2000 season, Pederson was the QB for the Browns in a game where the Browns defeated the Belichick-coached Patriots 19-10.

The lines for the game are:

Eagles vs. Patriots – 4.5 (48.5)

Money Lines:  Eagles +165  Patriots – 200  

The spread opened at 6 points and has been bet down.  You can find the spread as low as 4 points at several Vegas sportsbooks and a few offshore Internet sportsbooks.  The Total Line has held steady for most of the past 2 weeks.  The Money Lines have moved significantly; earlier this week there were several “six-figure” and “seven-figure” bets on the Eagles on the Money Line.  Recently, there has been a surge of “Patriots money” that has come in.

I will not wager on this game – – other than to participate in pool with friends as we watch the game together.  I guess that is part of the “illegal wagering” that the AGA projects for the game this year …  If I were going to bet, I would take the Eagles on the Money Line because the +165 line is attractive and because I want the Eagles to win the game.  If I were making a mythical pick on the game I would take the Eagles plus the points and I would take the game to go OVER.

Finally, recalling that the Eagles got to this game by beating the Vikings two weeks ago and recalling the “Minnesota Miracle” that put the Vikings in the NFC Championship Game, consider this comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“The Vikings defeated the New Orleans Saints on a 61-yard pass on the last play of the game. Minnesotans have not been this shocked since that pro wrestler was elected governor.”

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

 

 

In the midst of Super Bowl hype, newspapers and Internet sports sites must come up with filler material about the upcoming game because there appears to be an unwritten rule – as exist in baseball evidently – that there must be coverage of the Super Bowl every day.  One such concocted storyline had this as its headline:

• The Ten Best Teams To Appear In The Super Bowl

That will fill space to be sure; that is also of no consequence nor am I remotely interested in learning which teams that author felt deserved to be on the list.  Immediately, I thought it would be more interesting to suggest what were the Ten Worst Teams in Super Bowl history; however, that would require a whole lot more research that it is worth.  And so, totally off the top of my head and with only minimal research, let me list here:

• The Three Worst Teams To Appear In The Super Bowl

I will put them in reverse chronological order because I have no interest in making a ranking within this category:

• (January 2001) NY Giants:  The Giants lost this game to the Ravens 34-7; their only score came on a kickoff return for a TD in the third quarter.  Any momentum that may have provided evaporated about 15 seconds later when the Ravens returned the subsequent kickoff for a TD.  Giants total offense for the game was 152 yards and the Giants had to punt 11 times.
• (January 1995) San Diego Chargers:  The Chargers lost this game to the Niners 49-26.  It was not nearly that close.  The Niners scored a TD on the third play of the game and never stopped rolling until Steve Young left the game in the 4^th quarter with 6 TD passes to his credit.  The rout was not a surprise; the Vegas line for the game was Niners – 19.
• (January 1986) New England Patriots:  The Pats lost this game to the Bears 46-10.  The Pats actually led at one point 3-0; the Bears then scored 44 straight points.  To end the scoring, the Bears recorded a safety in the 4^th quarter.  The Patriots total offense in the game was 123 yards; their rushing offense consisted of 11 running plays that gained a total of 7 yards.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Skins acquisition of Alex Smith in a trade with the Chiefs.  This means the Skins will give Kirk Cousins his walking papers and I realized last evening how that speaks volumes about the team.  Back in 2012, the Skins drafted RG3 with the overall #2 pick behind Andrew Luck; then in the 4^th round they took Kirk Cousins.  Now both QBs are gone from the team and both have left the team with at least a modicum of rancor associated with the process.  There are annual surveys done to determine The 100 Best Places To Work In The US or some such compilation.  It occurs to me that the Washington NFL franchise is not going to appear on that list any time soon…

The NFL and FOX have agreed that FOX will get the Thursday Night Football TV rights for the next 5 years and the deal is worth about $3B.  The deal gives FOX 11 games from Weeks 4 thru 15 every year and the games will be simulcast on NFL Network.  Thursday night games in other weeks will be produced by FOX and shown on NFL Network.  The Thanksgiving Night Game is unaffected by this deal; that continues to be the property of NBC.  I think there are a couple of things to note about this deal:

1. Thursday Night Football is not as popular – does not get the same TV ratings – as Sunday Night Football by a wide margin.  However, if we look at the TV deal as a linear one, FOX will spend $600M to televise 11 of those games in a year (approximately $55M per game).  That is a lot of cheese considering the common narrative that the NFL has peaked in popularity and is in decline.
2. NFL players say the hate Thursday Night Football.  This contract puts $600M per year in the NFL TV revenue column and that means the NFL players will get about half of that in terms of increased salary cap.  With 32 teams sharing equally, that is about $9.5M per team.  I await the announcement by a group of player reps that the increased salary cap money is not worth playing on Thursday night about once a year.

The telecast for this year’s Super Bowl – NBC has the game – will have a conspicuous missing piece.  Bob Costas will not host – or be part of – the studio show associated with the game.  When I read that, I naturally assumed that because NBC also has the Winter Olympics starting right after the Super Bowl game that Costas was in Korea prepping for his work there.  Not so.  Mike Tirico is going to be the studio maven for the Winter Olympics this year.  I would prefer to be wrong about this, but it appears to me as if Bob Costas is being eased to the sidelines by NBC.  If so, that would be a shame because Bob Costas is more than merely very good at his craft.

Last weekend, Tiger Woods made the cut in a real PGA event and played through 4 full rounds of tournament golf.  There was a 2-year break in Woods’ ability to do that and this is a milestone for him in his quest to pull himself back toward the top of the golf world where he once stood alone.  In this tournament, Woods tied for 23^rd place shooting 3-under for the 72 holes.  That sort of performance is not eye-popping, nor does it recall the way Woods used to dominate golf courses.  However, it is a box that he needed to check for himself as a prep for the upcoming Masters in a couple of months.

Finally, let me close today with Scott Ostler’s comments in the SF Chronicle about Woods’ performance last weekend:

“If Tom Brady can be at the top of his game at 40, why not a rebuilt Tiger Woods at 42? There’s just too much accumulated golf knowledge, hunger and battle savvy packed into that bad-ass, free-safety body for Tiger to fade away. Plus, Woods never gets sacked, so to speak.

“Woods is still kind of a boring dude, though. When I write the screenplay for the movie about his late-career comeback, Tiger will be 60 pounds overweight, chain-smoking Camels as he waddles the fairways, and having a romantic fling with Tonya Harding.”

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

 

 

Even before the Super Bowl happens and weeks before NFL teams are allowed to make trades officially, two teams appear to have resolved their “QB situations”.  The Chiefs will send Alex Smith to the Skins in a trade.  That means the Chiefs will cast their lot with Patrick Mahomes in 2018 and presumably beyond and the Skins will part company with Kirk Cousins as their offensive leader.  What surprises me the most about this is the timing; it is not as if the Chiefs got such a bounty in return that they dared not let the moment pass them by; the cost of acquiring Alex Smith was a third-round pick plus DB, Kendall Fuller.

According to reports, Smith will sign a 4-year extension – his contract has 1 year left to go – and the extension is worth $92M with $71M guaranteed.  In today’s QB market, that is not a top-shelf price tag.  This exchange will make Cousins an unrestricted free agent meaning that he can sign on wherever he wants.  Here are potential landing spots – – in alphabetical order:

• Bills:  The Bills keep giving indications that they want to move on from Tyrod Taylor.  Are they in play here…?
• Browns:  They have a ton of cap room, so they could – theoretically – offer a huge monetary deal.  The team has a treasure trove of draft picks and an “offensive guy” as the head coach.  They were willing to march into the future behind AJ McCarron a couple of months ago; Cousins is better than that.  Here is the deal; these are the Browns…
• Broncos:  That top-shelf defense is not getting any younger; the team has squandered a couple of years of its elite status.  Cousins can likely provide a much quicker “fix” to the QB position than a top draft pick.  I think the Broncos will be major players here.
• Cardinals:  The retirement of Carson Palmer forces them to decide on their QB for the present and for the future.  The team has a “rookie coach” who is a “defensive guy”.  I don’t expect Cousins to end up here.
• Jags:  Forget for a moment the stats and all that stuff and use the eyeball test.  The Jags went to the AFC title game with Blake Bortles at QB; Kirk Cousins would be a significant upgrade at the QB position for this team.
• Jets:  Jets’ fans have made the pursuit of Cousins a team priority; will the Front Office there heed the wishes of the fans?  That is often not a good strategy; but, Lord knows, the Jets do need a QB desperately.
• Vikes:  They have 3 QBs on the roster who have actually played in NFL games and all 3 of them have contracts that expire.  I think they will “stay home” and get their QB from within their system, but they might decide to pursue Cousins.

I want to throw out one wild-card team to consider here.  If I were running the Steelers, I would sit down very privately with Ben Roethlisberger and find out if he is committed to playing out the rest of his contract.  He is to make $34M over the next 2 seasons but he has floated the idea of retirement and then rescinded it several times over the past 18 months.  Obviously, if Roethlisberger is committed to finish his deal in Pittsburgh, the Steelers should pay no attention to Kirk Cousins; but if Roethlisberger wavers, there are facts the Steelers need to face:

1. Kirk Cousins is a lot better than Landry Jones.
2. The Steelers have plenty of offensive weapons that could be wasted without competency at the QB position.

Let me make an observation about the Jets as a potential landing spot for Cousins and the Jets’ fans hankering for him to come to NYC.  Ask yourself this question:

• When was the last time the Jets had a “REALLY GOOD” quarterback?

I do not count Brett Favre for his one year with the Jets.  Favre is a Hall of Fame QB to be sure, but he was well on the downward arc of his career in 2008 with the Jets.  From 1998 to 2007, the Jets lived in the Vinny Testaverde/Chad Pennington Era; neither guy was terrible but neither guy was “Really Good” either.  Boomer Esiason spent 3 years with the Jets toward the end of his career; none of those seasons was special in any way.  Before Esiason, it was Ken O’Brien and Richard Todd and that takes us back to 1977.

The last “Really Good” QB for the NY Jets may in fact have been Joe Willie Namath.  To put that in perspective, he is 6 months older than I am; and when I was in high school, they were able to teach all of World History in 4 days…

Meanwhile, the KC Chiefs appear to have embarked on what should be an interesting/eventful offseason for them.  Last year, the Chiefs came out of the gate like gangbusters beating the Patriots in Foxboro by a score of 42-27.  They won their first 5 games; then hit the skids losing 6 of 7 games in mid-season.  After that, they turned it around and won out to win the AFC West.  Then they laid a gigantic egg at home in the playoffs turning a 21-3 halftime lead over the Titans into a loss.  Clearly, the Chiefs are not about to fire Andy Reid but now the team has a new offensive coordinator – the Bears hired Matt Nagy away to be their head coach – and a new starting QB.  And that may be only the beginning of change in KC:

• The Chiefs’ defense last year was not very good – particularly against the run.  Moreover, that defensive unit is not young and inexperienced; it could go over the cliff without the infusion of some new blood.
• The Chiefs also lost John Dorsey to the Browns as the Browns’ GM.  Dorsey was the guy credited with organizing and executing the Chiefs’ draft processes that led to the roster they have.

It should be an interesting offseason for the Chiefs and Chiefs’ fans.  However, it must be noted that along with “interesting” comes some angst and uncertainty.

Finally, since all of today’s rant deals with QBs and which teams may be looking for QBs, consider this comment from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times about one of the potential draftees at that position in this year’s draft:

“Wyoming QB, Josh Allen, told Cleveland’s WKRK FM Radio that ‘I want to be the guy that turns around the Cleveland Browns.’

“Might be time to start setting up a little blue tent on the draft-combine sideline.”

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