Category: Daily Rants

The Tampa Bay Rays want a new stadium.  In their interpretation, it is mainly the fault of Tropicana Field that the Rays draw so poorly.  There are studies underway and surveys to see where a new stadium might be constructed some day; and of course, there are lots of political concerns and issues woven under around and through all of this.  As I have said before, I have never been to Tropicana Field although I have driven by it on my way to Steinbrenner Field to see the Yankees play in Spring Training.  On that basis, I am not qualified to say if it is the venue or its location that causes the Rays to reside at or near the bottom of MLB in terms of home attendance year after year.

Having said all that, the Rays’ management and the folks who support the idea of building a new playpen for the Rays got a bit of serendipitous news this week.  Sports Illustrated had an article ranking 28 MLB ballparks in terms of food safety.  Here are two explanatory paragraphs from the opening of the piece:

“Thousands of public inspection records gathered from local health departments in the United States and Canada reveal that food safety varies widely across Major League Baseball’s venues. Inspectors uncovered many concerning practices, from nearly 250 total violations at Dodger Stadium to a single concession stand at Tropicana Field that racked up 25 violations alone. They also found stadiums, like Safeco Field, in stellar condition.

“Sports Illustrated used data from 28 local health departments to compile a comprehensive ranking of ballpark food safety across the league based on the most recent inspection of the stadium. Public records requests to Cleveland’s Progressive Field and Detroit’s Comerica Park went unfulfilled by publication, leaving them off this list.”

Here is what the article had to say about the situation at Tropicana Field – the worst one on the list:

“With staggering 105 critical violations in 2017, Tropicana Field brings up the rear in our rankings. Two food entities (the catering kitchen and the stand outside Section 303) tallied over 20 violations each. Violations ranged from the observed presence of live insects to black mold accumulating inside an ice bin. An employee was observed handling hot dogs and cash without washing hands in between. An ESPN report from seven years ago found that every inspected stand at Tropicana had at least one critical violation. That number has dropped from 100% to about 50%, but the Tampa Bay stadium still leads the way in eye-popping food safety numbers.”

I cannot begin to believe that this report and its timing represents some sort of secret cabal between Sports Illustrated and the forces touting a new stadium for the Rays.  However, this is not the sort of report that would make fans in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area more likely to take in a game this season.  You can read the entire Sports Illustrated article here and find where your favorite ball park falls on the list.  [Spoiler Alert:  Safeco Field in Seattle came in at the top of the list.]

Even though the preceding material regarding food at Tropicana Field is not necessarily appetizing, let me take a moment and point out one of the specialty food items available there.  This concoction is only available at day games and it is called the Brunch Bloody Mary.  Here is the deal:

1. Start with a 12-ounce Bloody Mary.
2. Add skewers carrying chunks of sausage, bacon, chicken, egg, waffle and donuts.
3. Get comfy in your seat as you nap your way through the 5^th, 6^th and 7^th innings…

Staying in the world of MLB, whatever efforts have been made to increase pace of play this year have not worked.  The games take forever and they are providing a lot of “non-action”.  According to the stat mavens:

• Home Runs happen at a rate of 1.25 per game per team.  There is little if any defensive involvement on a home run.
• Strikeouts happen at a rate of 8.24 per game per team.  There is little if any defensive involvement on a strikeout – assuming the catcher is minimally competent.
• Walks happen at a rate of 3.26 per game per team.  There is no defensive involvement on a walk.

These data show that fans can spend a lot of time sitting on their hands during games that take – on average – more than 3 hours to play.  The average game in 2017 takes 3 hours and 5 minutes which is up from 3 hours and 1-minute last year before MLB tried to increase pace of play and shorten games.  For reference, the average game 35 years ago in 1982 took 2 hours and 35 minutes.  There is no simple solution to the way baseball has evolved and it is not likely to return to the way it was played in 60s, 70s and 80s.  Baseball fans are simply going to have to become more involved in looking at various facets of the game between pitches for a simple reason:

• The number of pitches in an average game is also on the increase.  This year in a 9-inning game, the average is 297 pitches which is an all-time high.
• Moreover, the average time between pitches is 24.3 seconds.  That adds up to a lot of time when everyone on the field is just standing around scratching himself.

Finally, since I started out today talking about food at the ballpark, let me close with an unusual concoction that you can find if you venture out to Progressive Field in Cleveland to see the Indians play.  It is called the Killer Kilbane Dog – and no, I do not know how it got that name:

• This is a hot dog that comes topped with peanut butter, relish and Sriracha sauce.
• Pass the Rolaids, please…

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

 

 

UCLA QB, Josh Rosen, made news this week when he told an interviewer essentially that being a college football player and being a top-flight academic performer did not mix because it was like doing two full-time jobs.  He also stirred up some controversy by saying explicitly that there are some athletes in college who do not belong in college.  As you might imagine, this has provided fodder for the TV “sports debate programs” and for sports radio hosts.  As you can imagine, folks with various points of view on such issues have turned him into a lightning rod.  Let me try to examine what he said:

1. Playing college football takes a lot of time; being an academically excellent student takes a lot of time.  Not everyone can make a commitment to do both because it is difficult to do both.  However, it can be done – – and it is done by lots of football and basketball players on campuses around the country all the time.  Josh Rosen overstated the problem here.
2. While indeed there are plenty of college athletes who graduate from their university in four or five years, there are also plenty of college athletes who are only admitted to college because of their athletic abilities.  To deny that situation is Pollyannaish to the max.
3. Academic counsellors for athletes have the primary objective of keeping the athletes eligible.  If the athlete does not “speak up”, there is more than a small likelihood that the athlete will be “guided” into a series of easy courses/majors that will keep him/her eligible and may or may not provide the athlete with a useful degree upon graduation – – if that ultimately occurs.

Some college majors are more compatible with college athletics than others.  I was a chemistry major in undergraduate school.  When I took organic chemistry, it was a two-semester course which had 3 hours of lecture, 1 hour of recitation and 6 hours of laboratory per week.  The lecture part and the lab part were separate courses in terms of the credit I received, but the total class time for those 2 courses worth of credit was 10 hours per week – – and that does not account for even a moment of study outside the class.

Most courses where I went to school met 3 hours per week.  So, if someone majored in political science – to pick a subject at random – he/she would rack up 2 course credits with 6 contact hours per week.  Four hours per week may not sound like much, but if you are trying to “do two full-time jobs at once”, it does make a difference.  I do not want this to sound as if I had to bear up under hardship in college; that was not the case at all.  I merely use myself as an example here to suggest that some courses and some majors will make the already difficult road to simultaneous excellence in academics and athletics even more challenging.

Josh Rosen is 20 years old; he will not turn 21 until after the college football season is over.  He made some valid observations and he exaggerated some of his statements.  I do not think hyperbole is a capital offense for someone 20 years old…  For the record, Josh Rosen in majoring in economics at UCLA.

In the latest installment of the “Colin Kaepernick Saga”, people are organizing a rally to be held outside NFL HQS in NYC for 23 August.  The announcement of the rally came in a Tweet from Spike Lee.  Surely, we will hear more about this and learn more about the focus of this rally in the next week or so, but there are several things that are not clear to me as of now:

1. Is this rally to urge the NFL to put pressure on owners in order to get Colin Kaepernick a job as a QB for one of the teams?  I realize that Kaepernick’s situation is uncommon, but is a rally with that objective proper?  Should there have been similar rallies back when Tim Tebow wanted to be an NFL QB but could not get any team interested in him?  How about Joe Flabeetz?
2. Is this rally to focus on Kaepernick’s support for issues of police brutality and various other social causes in the African-American community?   If so, why hold it outside NFL HQS?  Roger Goodell is hardly a beloved figure with many football fans, but I doubt that any rational folks would pin the blame on him for things like police brutality and high unemployment rates in the African-American community.
3. Is this rally going to make it easier for Colin Kaepernick to get a job with an NFL team as the QB?  Call me a cynic, but I think this rally is a “Get Out Of Jail Free Card” for any owner/GM/coach who wants to avoid thinking about Colin Kaepernick as a member of the team.  Coaches talk about those “dreaded distractions” and any owner looking for an explanation as to why he has not talked to or signed Kaepernick can merely point to the video files of this rally and go off on a riff about “distractions”.

All that stuff will become clearer in the next couple of weeks but there is one thing that I know about this rally already.  Spike Lee is involved; he may or may not be one of the organizers, but he is obviously involved in some way.  Now IF the objective here is to get Colin Kaepernick a QB job somewhere, I am not sure that an NFL coach or GM is going to put a lot weight on Spike Lee’s recommendations/urgings.  After all, his advice and direction for the NY Knicks has not produced much of anything positive.

File this under “I Could Not Make This Up”; the Philadelphia Union of MLS have hired a Chief Tattoo Officer.  The team and a tattoo parlor in suburban Philadelphia called Bonedaddys have an agreement that names Bonedaddys as the “go-to place for Union players and staff in need of tattoo services.”  You might imagine that some PR guy conjured this up and signed up some deal just to get a press release out.  Well, if team press releases are to be believed, this was a serious effort.  According to the Philadelphia Union:

• 150 tattoo parlors were initially considered for this “partnership”.
• 13 parlors were “semi-finalists” and 5 parlors were “finalists”
• The winner was determined by “site visits” to the 5 “finalists”.

For those who live near Philly, this partnership will kick off on 21 August at Bonedaddys.  To get the ball rolling, the Union’s VP for marketing along with one of the Union players and the founder of the team’s fan club will all be getting tattoos at that kick-off ceremony.  I will not be able to make it to this party; I have an appointment back on Earth… [ /Philip Roth]

Finally, since my head is still spinning over the idea of a team hiring a Chief Tattoo Officer, let me close with some musings by Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle:

“Idly wondering: Why did Superman need a real job? Need cash? Grab a lump of coal and squeeze it into a diamond. Want to get close to Lois Lane? Call her and say, ‘Superman here, let’s have lunch.’

“And if Superman needed a real job, why newspaper reporter? Should I fight interplanetary crime today, or cover the Metropolis school board meeting?

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

 

 

There has been a lot of “news” in this NBA offseason regarding free agent movements and supposed tensions within the Cavaliers’ organization and GMs getting fired and the like.  In the midst of all that “furor”, the fact remains that the NY Knicks remain a “fixer-upper franchise”.  They have a new GM because they are paying their former GM tens of millions of dollars to sit at home in Montana to not generally manage the team.  Now the new GM has made a move:

• The NY Knicks signed Michael Beasley to a 1-year contract at the veteran minimum.
• With that move, the Knicks have a full roster; they can only add a player if they drop a player.

Michael Beasley was a high school sensation and a monster at Kansas State in his only year there.  He was drafted by the Miami Heat in 2008 and he played well for his first two seasons there.  In 2010 – when Miami acquired LeBron James and Chris Bosh – Beasley was the odd man out as the Heat traded him to the Timberwolves.  He stayed in Minnesota for 2 years before being traded to the Suns in 2012 where he was released in 2013 after an arrest involving marijuana possession.

Since his release by the Suns, he has played for the Miami Heat (again), the Shanghai Golden Sharks, the Houston Rockets and the Milwaukee Bucks.  The Knicks will be his 7^th team in 9 seasons which ought not to bring paroxysms of joy to Knicks’ fans; that is not the career arc one would have expected or predicted for Michael Beasley after his tenure at Kansas State.

I said that the Knicks are a “fixer-upper franchise”.  If the Knicks were a house, they would need a new roof; new windows and a lot of interior remodeling.  Michael Beasley seems to me to be a new azalea bush planted in the front yard.

Speaking of player moves that would fall in the category of “less than monumental”, there is an AP report that the Texas Rangers sold relief pitcher, Ernesto Frieri to the Seattle Mariners for $1.  Yes, when I read the report, I thought for sure that was a typo just as you probably think it is a typo.  However, that figure appears in several reports about this transaction so I guess it is correct.  I would love to hear a transcript of the phone calls between the Rangers’ GM and the Mariners’ GM as they negotiated this deal.

• Did the Rangers start out asking for $10?

As I grazed through the channels of my cable TV package yesterday, I ran across a Little League game between teams from Tennessee and Georgia as part of the tournament that selects the teams from various regions to make up the field for the Little League World Series Tournament in Williamsport, PA.  Indeed, ESPN continues to expand its coverage of Little League baseball in these summer doldrum days and you may be certain that they will provide blanket coverage of the games in Williamsport.

That means it is the time of year for me to remind everyone here that Little League athletes are even more exploited than college athletes.  Whether you believe that collegiate athletes in the revenue sports should be paid or not, the fact of the matter is that collegiate athletes are given something in exchange for their services – the possibility of coming out of college with a degree and without a huge college debt that needs to be paid off.  Little League players – for the most part – come away from their time in the Little League with memories and not much else.  So, someone other than the players and their families are taking down the rights fees paid by ESPN for these television rights.

For the record, I am not “anti-Little League”.  I played Little League baseball – not well, but I played.  I very much enjoyed my time in Little League; one of my teammates from those days was eventually one of my fellow travelers on those baseball odysseys I used to take every summer – prior to his death.  I am a proponent of Little League.  Notwithstanding all the above:

• You cannot be a champion for “exploited athletes” without taking on the issue of exploitation of children between the ages of 9 and 12 in Little League Baseball.

With NFL training camps in full swing, I have read reports about two players signed as free agents in the offseason who have “weight incentive clauses” in the contracts they signed.  Eddie Lacy reportedly has a series of “weigh-ins” with the Seattle Seahawks that he must have with weight targets to allow him to collect portions of his bonus money.  According to this report at CBSSports.com back in May, Lacy earned his first $55K by weighing in at 253 lbs.

CBSSports.com also says that Falcons’ free agent signee, Dontari Poe, has a $500K weight clause in his contract.  Last year, Poe was listed at 346 lbs and sometimes you would think that weight was before breakfast in the morning.  This report says that the Falcons want him to “slim down” to 330 lbs in order for him to be “quicker off the line of scrimmage”.

Given those contractual clauses makes me wonder when we turned that corner.  In the past, if a player was “overweight”/”out of shape”, the coaching staff had two choices:

1. They could keep the player around and tolerate his being out of shape.
2. They could cut him and find someone else who was in shape to take his place.

Today we pay professional players tens of thousands of dollars – even hundreds of thousands of dollars – to be in shape to play the game that is their profession.  Somehow, this seems to confuse “change” with “progress” …

Finally, let me close with a comment from Brad Rock in the Deseret News:

“Michael Phelps’ highly anticipated race with a shark was a red herring.

“The Discovery Channel’s event ended up being Phelps swimming against a computer generation of a swimming shark.

“Still, it was more realistic than the NBA All-Star Game.”

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

 

 

The latest tempest in a spittoon in the sports world seems to be a manufactured controversy about Tom Brady refusing to say whether or not he suffered concussions last season that were either undetected by the NFL protocols or unreported by those who detected them if they existed in the first place.  His wife said about a month ago that he had indeed suffered concussions last season; Brady’s answer to inquiries about that “revelation” was simple and direct:

• That’s none of your business.

Reporters are not used to being spoken to in that manner and TV pundits can fly into paroxysms of outrage merely at the thought that anyone could hold such a thought let alone express it.  And you know what…?

1. Tom Brady is 100% right.  It is none of “the public’s” business.
2. This is a personal medical matter and it is an interpersonal matter between Brady and his wife.

If this were Joe Flabeetz – a bus driver in Boston – and he was asked about his medical situation and/or some statement his wife had made to someone else a month ago, Joe Flabeetz would be completely correct to tell the questioner to go pound sand.  That would be none of the questioner’s business.

If the medical condition we were talking about in the Brady instance were something other than a concussion, the same is true.  Imagine the following interchange:

• Reporter:  Tom, your wife said you played in several games last year with hemorrhoids and that was not on the injury list.  What’s your comment?
• Brady:  That’s none of your business.

The NFL has established something it calls the concussion protocols as part of its homage to player safety.  Those protocols along with the NFL employees who are charged to maintain and enforce those protocols are the ones who should be questioned about this matter.  Just because Tom Brady is a five-time Super Bowl winning QB, he has absolutely no extra obligation to share his medical information with the public than you do or I do or Joe Flabeetz does.

Recently, someone was arrested for shoplifting and identified himself to the police as Lucky Whitehead – kick returner/WR for the Dallas Cowboys.  Whitehead was not the perpetrator nor was he the one who was arrested; nonetheless, when the team heard the news of the arrest, the Cowboys cut Whitehead and then refused to say why they did that once it became clear that Whitehead had done nothing wrong.

Whitehead was not one of the Cowboys’ star players; that is the fundamental reason he was cut when the team heard this news and why they did not fall all over themselves to “rectify the situation” once it became clear that they had reacted to what is now commonly referred to as “fake news”.  You may be certain that if something similar had happened to Dak Prescott, the Cowboys’ actions would have been very different.

Lucky Whitehead was signed quickly by the NY Jets; for the moment at least, he is on an NFL roster and has the opportunity to make a team and get paid for his time and effort.  Nevertheless, the “Lucky Whitehead saga” drew this commentary from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“After a Dallas Cowboys return man was arrested for alleged shoplifting, he was cut and picked up by the Jets. This may be the greatest deterrent to crime I’ve heard.”

In the 2015 NFL Draft, the Falcons took CB, Jalen Collins from LSU.  He started two games in 2015.  He began the 2016 season with a 4-game suspension for violation of the substance abuse policy; recognize here that to suffer that suspension, he had to run afoul of the policy at least three times.  From the fifth game forward, Collins was part of the defensive backfield rotation for the Falcons and wound up starting 6 games back there.  This year, Collins will start the season with a 10-game suspension for – – you guessed it – – violation of the substance abuse policy.

If I understand the CBA correctly, Collins has a sword of Damocles hanging over him at this point.  He can come back to the Falcons after 10 games this year – if they want him back – and his career can go forward.  However, the next time he fails a test for PEDs, he will be suspended for 2 years and would then have to apply for reinstatement to the NFL.  Collins is not a “Pro Bowl caliber” cornerback; in fact, he would probably not be a full-time starter for the Falcons this year even if he were available – absent an injury to one of the starting corners in training camp.  To my mind, that pretty much means that one more failed test would be the end of his career.

As a second-round pick back in 2015, he got a nice signing bonus (in the $2M range) but his “cap number” and his “dead money” impact on the Falcons’ finances are minimal at this point.  This young man is potentially watching his career circle the drain.  Here is a statement issued by Falcons GM, Thomas Dimitroff:

“We are extremely disappointed that for the second straight season we are dealing with a suspension for Jalen. Such are the consequences when certain choices are made. Our decisions going forward will be based on what [Coach] Dan [Quinn] and I feel is best for the team.”

Finally, here is another NFL-related observation from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“Viagra and Cialis will not be advertising during televised NFL games this fall. No word on how the league will recoup the estimated $6 trillion in lost revenue.

“Viagra and Cialis are done with the NFL. Now we will never again see a kick returner running in the open field while an announcer goes, ‘We’ll be right back after this word about erectile dysfunction’.”

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

 

 

Dress For Success is a non-profit organization here in the Washington DC area – and probably in many other areas as well – with the mission to help women achieve economic success and independence.  One way they try to help is to provide women with attire that is appropriate for women in the professional workplace.  I am not here to endorse this organization – even though I think they have a laudatory mission – nor am I here to disparage them.  I mention them only because the name of their organization, “Dress For Success”, has an interesting connection with a sports story today.  Here is the deal:

• Dolphins’ QB Ryan Tannehill injured his knee in practice last week and it may require season ending surgery.
• The Dolphins signed Jay Cutler out of retirement to a 1-year contract for $10M to be their QB for 207.
• There were reports the Dolphins also considered Tim Tebow as an option for that job had they not been able to reach an agreement with Cutler.

So what does this have to do with “Dress For Success”?  Well, there is another QB out there looking for a team named Colin Kaepernick and given the way his job situation has evolved, the most likely avenue for him to get a job in the NFL is to have a team lose its starter in training camp so that …  Well, that just happened in Miami and he did not get an audition let alone a job.  “Dress For Success” may have had something to do with that.

Last year, a reporter for the Miami Herald was interviewing Kaepernick prior to a game between the Dolphins and the Niners.  The reporter – of Cuban heritage – asked Kaepernick why he wore a T-shirt with the images of Malcom X and Fidel Castro on it when he had a news conference to explain the basis of his National Anthem protest.  You can read the article here – and I suggest that you do so – because I believe it explains why Colin Kaepernick did not get an audition with the Miami Dolphins.

Miami has a large Latino community with linkages to Cuba – and the vast majority of those folks do not consider Fidel Castro to be a worthwhile human being.  In the interview with the Miami Herald reporter, Kaepernick demonstrated that he did not understand that situation nor did he realize that Fidel Castro is like a “third-rail” in Miami.  He may have learned about the intensity of those feelings over the weekend; if he still does not understand them, then he needs to place a telephone call to Ozzie Guillen who can explain it to him with first-hand knowledge.

Kaepernick still has a shot to sign on with the Ravens; there has been talk of front office consideration of that move in the wake of Joe Flacco missing a few days of practice early in training camp.  Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle had a piercing comment on the Ravens and their deliberations last weekend:

“The hilarity continues in the Colin Kaepernick saga. Ravens’ owner Steve Bisciotti, speaking before a group of fans, said of the reports of team interest in Kaepernick, ‘Your opinions matter to us. … We’re very sensitive to it, and we’re monitoring it, and we’re trying to figure out what’s the right tack. So, pray for us.’

Pray for us? I’m no theologian, but if Ravens’ fans are devoting valuable prayer time to asking the Lord to guide this football team in its quest for a backup quarterback, your life and your world are in terrific shape.”

Can I get an “AMEN !!” here?

Speaking of QBs who may be looking for a job, there is a possibility that Skins’ QB, Kirk Cousins may be a free agent next year – after playing on two consecutive franchise tags.  People have speculated that he would be coveted by the Niners and the Bills because their current head coaches had been offensive coordinators in Washington when Cousins was there.  And, of course, anyone who follows the NFL even casually knows that the Browns are always looking for a QB and they will have a boatload of cap room to dangle in front of Cousins.

Just for giggles, I wonder if the dominoes might fall in a different way:

• Ben Roethlisberger contemplated retirement in this off-season and decided to come back for the 2017 season.
• Just suppose that was a real soul-searching on his part and that he seriously considered retirement to the point that after one more year of wear-and-tear on his body, Ben Roethlisberger decides to hang up the jockstrap at the end of this season.  I am not predicting this; I said, “Just suppose …”
• Now, put yourself in free agent Kirk Cousins’ position.  The Niners and the Bills have coaches you know and like – – but their supporting casts, particularly their offensive lines, are less than stellar.  The Browns have a coach who is supposed to be “great with QBs” – – but when push comes to shove, these are still the Browns and that is not good.  And then, there are the Pittsburgh Steelers…
• With the Steelers, he could throw to Antonio Brown who is at the very least one of the top 5 WRs in the NFL.  With the Steelers, he could hand the ball off to LeVeon Bell who is at the very least one of the top 5 RBs in the NFL.  He would have a competent OL in front of him and a team that normally puts a competent defensive unit together.
• Cousins is going to make a ton of money wherever he signs a long-term deal and he has already made about $45M on the two franchise tags the Skins gave him.  So, why would the Steelers be a bad choice on his part – – given that Ben Roethlisberger actually decides to retire?

Finally, let me close with another observation from Scott Ostler in the SF Chronicle:

“Fun fact: Scientists and statisticians say that on the opening day of NFL training camps every season, the total amount of weight lost by NFL players in the offseason exactly matches the total amount gained by other players.”

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

 

 

Earlier this week, I presented a list of sports “stories” that I had heard enough about and expected to get commentary about things I omitted from the list.  If you need or want to refresh your memory about my list, you can find it here.  Then, as I sat down to compile those suggested additions, I came up with a couple more examples of stories that can be put on the shelf as far as I am concerned.

• Reader Tenacious P posted a comment saying that he had had enough of “NFL Power Rankings by position or by mother-in-law.”  I can accept that.
• An e-mail response suggested that “MLB trade rumors and NHL season previews” had run their course.  I suspect that our Canadian friends to the north might disagree with that second suggestion.
• An e-mail response expressed surprise that I did not include “All-Star Games” given my abhorrence of those spectacles.  It was indeed an omission on my part and this is the communication that got me thinking about two additions to my list that should have been there in the first place.

Since I am limiting this compilation to sports stories, I think it is required that I find a sports-themed way to present two new entries to the list of things I have heard enough about.  So, “Upon further review …”:

1. The NFL Combine:  This “event” is even less interesting than the NFL Draft which made my original list.  Is it really necessary to stage a multi-day event with blanket media coverage to find out how fast a bunch of football players can run a 40-yard dash?  This event has given rise to the boiler plate stories during that week about which players are “rocketing up the draft boards” and other players who did not impress.  Ho-hum!
2. Where Carmelo Anthony will play basketball next year:  After he gets traded, tell me the parameters of the deal and give me some analysis of how the Knicks and his new team will be better or worse as a result of the deal.  If he stays in NYC, wait until the day before the regular season starts and tell me then about the Knicks’ prospects for the 2017/18 season.  However, unless talks heat up between the Knicks and the Washington Generals, keep your “news” to yourself, please.

Yesterday, Tom Brady celebrated his 40^th birthday.  That turn of the calendar prompted a smattering of stories about the possibility that his performance on the football field is about to crater.  Central to a lot of those “analyses” was the fact that the Pats did not trade Jimmy Garoppolo in the off-season leading inevitably to the conclusion that the Pats’ coaches see signs of decline and are preparing for a “changing of the guard” so to speak.  Slow down, Sparky; let’s try to inject a tad of rationality to the discussion here.

• Tom Brady has been in the NFL since he was 23 years old.  Of course he is on the “back nine of his career”; if that were not the case, one would have to assume he will be playing until he is at least 57 years old and I am certain that even he would admit that playing to age 57 in the NFL is beyond reach.
• Brady operates as a passing QB; he is not now – and has never been – a “scrambler”.  So, if his performance is about to “fall off a cliff”, have there been indications of that in recent seasons?  I would argue that his performances in the past two years have shown no measurable decline.
• In 2015, Brady threw for 4770 yards in 16 games (298.1 yards per game).  He led the league in TD passes (36) and had the lowest percentage of his passes intercepted (1.1%).  He was 38 years old.
• In 2016, Brady threw for 2554 yards in 12 games (296.2 yards per game).  The 4 games he missed were due to the Deflategate suspension.  He threw 28 TD passes in those 12 games which is more per game than he threw in 2015 and his percentage of passes intercepted again led the league (0.5%).  He was 39 years old.
• Father Time has never missed a tackle.  Tom Brady will not play forever and it is very possible that when his time has come, his performance levels will drop like a rock.  But if someone can see that impending disaster coming based on recent data, I will need some convincing.

By the way, Tom Brady is certainly not the first person to be a starting QB in the NFL north of 40 years old.  It would take far too much time and energy to compile a complete list so let me go with a few names that come to mind who played QB in the NFL into their 40s:

• George Blanda
• Len Dawson
• Brett Favre
• Warren Moon
• Vinny Testaverde
• John Unitas

Finally, since I mentioned Tom Brady above, here is a comment from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times regarding one of Brady’s activities in the last off-season:

“Pats QB Tom Brady, making a visit to Japan, grappled with a sumo wrestler and then posed for a picture with a few of them, TMZ reported.

“The photo made Tom look, shall we say, a tad underinflated.”

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

 

 

Ara Parseghian died yesterday at the age of 94.  He played for legendary coach, Paul Brown, with the Cleveland Browns in the 40s; he was an assistant coach under Woody Hayes at Miami (Oh); he was the head coach at Notre Dame in the 60s and 70s leading the Irish to two national championships.  His winning percentage at Notre Dame was .836 and he is properly a member of the college football Hall of Fame.  By all accounts, he was an excellent coach and a good person.

Rest in peace, Ara Parseghian…

There is another coach in the news today – except I would be hard pressed to say that this man is either a great coach or a wonderful human being.  Dave Bliss was the basketball coach at Baylor about 15 years ago; let me just say that his tenure there ended very poorly.  Central to that story is the fact that one of the players was murdered by one of his teammates and Bliss tried to get the team and his assistant coaches to back up a concocted story that the victim was selling drugs and this murder was “drug related”.  You can read the Wikipedia account of this here; just scroll down to the section about “The Baylor Scandal”.  Just a heads up, that is about as polite a story about what happened as one could hope for.

In August 2003, I took issue with Coach Bliss’ actions as well as plenty of other folks who were involved directly or indirectly in the saga.  At the time I wrote that rant, the guilt of the teammate had not been established; that would not happen until 2005 when the teammate plead guilty to the murder.  Nevertheless, you can read my outrage at what went down at Baylor here.

Dave Bliss is in the news today because he just got a new job as the head basketball coach at Calvary Chapel Christian School in Las Vegas, NV.  In addition to those duties, Bliss will be the school’s Athletic Director and will be a teacher at the school.  Let me be clear; I understand completely that a fundamental precept of Christianity is redemption and it has to be clear from the name of this school that it signs onto Christianity and its teachings.  Nevertheless, I would find somewhere else to educate my children than a school that hired Dave Bliss to be a teacher, Athletic Director and head basketball coach.

If that statement leads you to conclude that I am a closed-minded bigot, so be it.  I prefer to think of myself in this dimension as a parent who is concerned about the values that my child learns in school and how those mesh with what I might be trying to teach him/her at home.

Here is a link to a column written in the Las Vegas Review-Journal by columnist Ron Kantowski.  He and I are of like minds on this hiring decision but his column makes the case more eloquently than I can.  I commend this column to your reading.

Since I am talking about things happening in the Las Vegas area, here is a sports wagering item I ran across last week.  According to the Nevada Gaming Commission, the sportsbooks in Nevada won a total of $14.9M on bets involving baseball games in June 2017.  This represents the highest win total for the month of June ever and the trend in the handle for baseball wagering is increasing year-over-year.  MLB stages 2,430 games in a regular season as compared to 256 for the NFL.  The handle for wagers on MLB games is still dwarfed by the handle for NFL games, but if the trend continues, the sportsbooks could have increased ways to separate players from their bankrolls.

And since I mentioned MLB, there is a report that the Toronto Blue Jays have already “alerted” their season ticket holders that prices will be going up in 2018.  This will be the 4^th year in a row the Jays have increased ticket prices and the largest increase for 2018 will be 17%.

Looking at the MLB standings as of this morning, one might be tempted to ask why this is happening:

• The Jays are in last place in the AL East with a 51-57 record
• The Jays are 8 games out of first place
• The Jays are 5 games behind in the race for the second wild-card slot.

The Jays have made it to the playoffs the last two years and in each of those seasons they lost in the ALCS; it would seem difficult to call the 2017 season to date anything less than “very disappointing”.  And during a “very disappointing” season, one wonders who thought it would be a good idea to tell season ticket holders they are going to have to pay more to see Jays’ baseball in 2018?

It is not as if the Jays are struggling at the gate to generate revenue.  As of this morning, the Jays have drawn more fans to their home games than any team in the AL; they average 40,124 people per home game.

Finally, since I mentioned sports wagering above, consider this comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha-World Herald:

“The mayor of a town in France ate a rat after losing a bet on a soccer game.  OK, I think we’ve got another politician ready to take an anti-gambling stance.”

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

 

 

Living about 3,000 miles from San Diego, I observed the waxing and waning of the prospects of a new football stadium there pretty much as an intellectual exercise.  Obviously, residents in the area could see the “intellectual aspects” of the question – – but they had other emotional and direct financial concerns that had to take center stage in their decisions.  What I did not realize then – and am only now beginning to be aware of – is that the San Diego St. football team and program may be casualties of friendly fire in the saga that would up sending the Chargers to LA.

The San Diego St. Aztecs have played their home games in Qualcomm Field for a while now; they have a lease to continue to play there through the end of the 2018 season.  What is the big deal, you ask?  Well, that is only two years in the future and there are movements afoot to raze Qualcomm Stadium around that time.  Compounding the problem is that there is no other top shelf football venue in San Diego to absorb the Aztecs’ games.  Holy dispossession, Batman…

As usual, money is at the heart of this issue.  With the Chargers out of the city and their presence in Qualcomm no longer an impediment, the tract of land on which the stadium and its parking lots sit has become one of the most valuable and sought-after bits of real estate in all of So. Cal.  One investment group estimated the value of this tract of land at $13M per acre.  Let’s do some math:

• A football field is 120 yards long or 360 feet long.
• A football field is 160 feet wide.
• The area of a football field is 57,600 sq. ft. or 1.32 acres.
• If that investment group is correct, the field itself at Qualcomm – forgetting all the other area involved in the stadium and the parking areas is worth $17.2M.

No offense to the San Diego St. football program but that stadium and its attendant spaces is worth a lot more money than Mountain West football is going to generate.  And that is the fundamental reason why San Diego St. football is not in a happy place at the moment.

There are plenty of “plans”/”options” floating around.  One has the school and an investment group “partnering” to build a dual use football/soccer stadium on the site.  When you talk about a soccer stadium in the US, you are talking about something that will seat 30,000 to 35,000 folks.  If San Diego St. aspires to move up in the pecking order of college football, a home stadium of that size is a deal-breaker.  Before you think that San Diego St. has no chance of “moving up”, remember it was only a couple of years ago that it applied to become part of the Big 12 when that conference was thinking about adding new blood.

Maybe the short-term answer is for the Aztecs to play home games at Petco Park – home of the Padres.  That would work until the Padres make it to the MLB playoffs and need to play games well into October.  The team could schedule around home stands if they end in September – – but not if they go all the way to Halloween.  Or is it too fantastical to think about the Padres seriously in relation to the World Series?

Since I am on the subject of college football – sort of – let me comment on some recent remarks made by Alabama coach, Nick Saban, regarding college scheduling.  All he wants to do is to change the landscape of football scheduling and the way bowl game participants are selected.  Other than that, it would be “situation normal” …

In an interview with ESPN folks, Saban said that schools in the Power 5 conferences should only play teams in the Power 5 conferences; that would eliminate many of the sacrificial lamb games where teams like Alabama pay a Division 1-AA team to come to Tuscaloosa for a glorified scrimmage.  On balance, that is a good idea.

He also wants teams selected for bowl games to be done based on some sort of “power ranking” and not based on team record.  This is the way March Madness selections and seedings are done and let’s just say that process is not without controversy.  It is not an exact science by any means.  The good part of that idea is that a football selection committee could create a larger number of interesting bowl games as compared to the current system where individual bowls have contracts with various conferences to supply teams just so long as the teams have won 6 games in the season.  The fact of the matter is that games between two teams at 7-5 – no matter the conferences – are only marginally interesting.

Saban’s idea to reduce the number or patsy games – against Division 1-AA opponents or against bottom feeders in the “strap-hanger conferences” of Division 1-A – would mean playing more games inside one’s conference and/or scheduling far more competitive out of conference games.  As a fan, I like where that idea can possibly lead.

Here is a potential downside.  There are 5 “strap-hanger conferences” I Division 1-A and schools in those conferences can use the big paydays that they get from playing the top-shelf teams even if it means getting humiliated on the scoreboard.  Nick Saban’s idea would consign those teams to a lower economic status – and economics plays a huge role in a successful football program at the collegiate level.  The same goes for those bowl games that I find tedious at best because they involve teams that just are not very good – no matter what their record says.  The fact is that the money from those bowl games is important to those programs and if things move to a “power rating selection process”, some of those schools will be on the outside looking in.  They just will…

Nick Saban is not out to feather his own nest here nor is he thinking along lines that will destroy college football.  I do not like all of his ideas but they deserve consideration simply because it is always possible to take a really good product and make it better.

Finally, sticking with today’s “theme” of college football, consider this comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“My biggest takeaway from Big Ten media days: We need to get Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck to switch to decaf.

“How excited was Fleck at media days? Picture Richard Simmons with his finger in a light socket.”

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

 

 

A little less than 5 years ago, I wrote that Bud Selig was an excellent Commissioner of Baseball.  That was a minority view at the time and it is certainly not widely held today.  Notwithstanding that sentiment, Bud Selig is in the Baseball Hall of Fame – as he ought to be.  Here is a link to what I wrote in 2012 about his tenure as Commissioner of Baseball listing his accomplishments, comparing him to the previous Commissioners of Baseball and comparing him to the commissioners in the other major US sports.

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. announced his retirement from NASCAR racing earlier this year and recently signed on with NBC as a commentator.  Not surprisingly, NBC says it will use him to do color commentary and analysis for NASCAR events.  However, in the announcement regarding Earnhardt joining NBC, the network said it will also look to include him in “other parts of NBC’s programming outside of racing.”  Here is an off-the-wall prediction:

• The final NASCAR event for this season will be Sunday Nov.19^th at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
• Earnhardt is widely known to be a rabid Washington Redskins’ fan and NBC will telecast the Giants at Washington game on Thursday night November 23 (Thanksgiving night).
• I predict Earnhardt will have a speaking role in the pre-game walk-up to the game and will do a “drop-in” to the booth during the game to chitchat with Al Michaels and Cris Colinsworth.

A friend asked me recently if I thought that the movement of 3 NFL franchises in a year’s time might be detrimental to the league.  I said the league might come to regret putting two teams in Los Angeles at the same time but that the league could remedy that “problem” if and when it materialized by moving the Chargers again.  My friend then said that the owners must not have been foresighted when they voted to allow all of these movements.

That sent me to do a bit of research and here is what I believe is the situation with regard to the 29 NFL owners who are not moving their franchises and who voted to approve the movements of the Rams, Chargers and Raiders:

• After the NFL front office takes its cut of the relocation fees charged to these teams, each of those 29 other owners will pocket somewhere between $53M and $55M.  All those 29 owners had to do was to raise their hands to vote “YES”.
• I suspect that was all of the foresightedness that most of the owners needed to vote the way that they did…

In international soccer news, the US Men’s National Team (USMNT) won the CONCACAF Gold Cup beating Jamaica in the final game 2-1.  About a year ago, the USMNT was in the doldrums to say the least; they were struggling with early games in the World Cup qualifying rounds and the team played “dispiritedly”.  A change of coaches has seemingly changed whatever ailed the team back then.  In 13 games since Bruce Arena took over, the USMNT has not lost a game.

The CONCACAF Gold Cup is contested every other year and involves the national teams from North America, Central America and the Caribbean region.  In terms of using this tournament as a benchmark for FIFA worldwide competition, recognize that the South American teams do not participate.  That means that Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia – all four ranked in FIFA’s Top Ten worldwide – were not involved.  Three other South American teams – Peru, Mexico and Uruguay – are ranked between #10 and #20 in the FIFA rankings.  And obviously, none of the European national teams – good or bad – participated.

This is not to diminish the victory by the USMNT in any way; it is simply meant to provide a bit of context with regard to the CONCACAF Gold Cup event itself.  Winning this tournament does not advance the USMNT to the World Cup tournament to be held in Russia in 2018; earning a slot in that tournament is the next hurdle for the USMNT.  Here is how the CONCACAF World Cup qualifying stands now:

• There remain 6 teams in the running for 3 guaranteed entry slots in the World Cup Tournament.  A fourth slot is possible based on a play-in game against a team from the Asian Federation.
• Each team has played 6 games and the USMNT is in 3^rd place trailing Mexico and Costa Rica.  For the moment, they lead Panama by 1 point, Honduras by 3 points and Trinidad and Tobago by 5 points.
• The USMNT has 4 games left in this round; the next one is against Costa Rica and the rest are against the teams trailing them in the table as of today.  In the matches leading up to now, the USMNT lost to Costa Rica, drew with Panama and beat Honduras and Trinidad and Tobago.

Finally, let me close with a soccer note that came from Brad Rock’s column, Rock On, in the Deseret News:

“McDonald’s is reconsidering its sponsorship of next year’s World Cup, due to ethical questions regarding FIFA.

“Meanwhile, FIFA is considering ending the agreement based on the taste of McDonald’s fish sandwiches.”

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

 

 

Yesterday was all about one subject – – CTE and football.  Today will be more like an anthology – – except not nearly as literate.  Let me begin with the release of results from a recent poll done by JD Power & Associates, a highly regarded polling and market consulting firm.  According to the summary of the data, it was the “national anthem protests” that caused the major portion of the drop in TV viewership for the NFL last year.  Let’s do some math here as we contemplate the interpretation – not the results – of this polling:

1. JD Power polled 9200 people (a good sample size) who had attended at least one sporting event last year if they tuned in to see less NFL football last season and if so, why did they do so.  (These questions are layered and are addressed to a segment of the population likely to watch NFL games on TV.)
2. Of the ones who said they watched less of the NFL on TV, the highest response as to why they did so was some version of “Colin Kaepernicks’s national anthem protest”.  That was the answer given by 26% of the fraction that said they watched less NFL football on TV.
3. That sounds as if the protest had a major effect – – – until you also notice that according to the same JD Power survey, only 12% of this audience said it watched fewer NFL telecasts last year.  So, it was 26% of the 12% who watched less football who did so because of the protest.  That is about 3% and that is a far less dramatic result.
4. Going slightly deeper into the numbers, 27% of the respondents said they watched more NFL football last year and 62% said they watched the same amount.  So, based on this survey, for every person who watched less NFL last year, there are more than 2 other people who watched more.

The people who believe deeply in Colin Kaepernick and the cause he espouses want very much to be able to say that they and he have “started a movement” and that it has been manifest in diminishing the popularity of the most popular sport in the US.  The problem is that wishing it were so does not make it so.  NFL ratings were down last year significantly up until the election of 2016; from that point forward NFL TV ratings were down only 1% year-over-year.

Two events earlier this week gave those folks who are outraged by Colin Kaepernick’s lack of an NFL job reason to howl at the moon.

• First, the LA Chargers invited RG3 to come and work out for them but did not extend a similar offer to Kaepernick.  Most neutral observers would agree that Kaepernick is a better QB than RG3, but it was RG3 who “got the call”.  The Chargers did not sign RG3, but they “kicked the tires” …
• Second, the Chargers then traded for a backup QB sending a conditional draft pick to Buffalo for Cardale Jones.  Let’s just say that Jones’ résumé as an NFL QB is a tad thin.  He has appeared in 1 game; and in that game, he was 6 for 11 for 96 yards with 0 TDs and 1 INT.  Colin Kaepernick led a team to the Super Bowl.

Since I mentioned the NFL and its telecasts above, let me now let you in on the way ESPN will structure its programming on Sunday mornings leading up to the NFL telecasts at 1:00PM ET.

• At 7:00 AM, ESPN will air a 3-hour version of SportsCenter
• At 10:00 AM, ESPN will air a 3-hour version of its Sunday NFL Countdown; that is an expansion over previous years.  Chris Berman will not be at the helm as he had been for decades and the other studio hosts will be different too.  Samantha Ponder – wife of NFLer Christian Ponder – will be in charge replacing Berman.  The core group of studio hosts will be Matt Hasselbeck, Randy Moss, Rex Ryan and Charles Woodsen.  The standard cast of NFL Insiders at ESPN will make regular appearances here too.
• At 10:00 AM, SportsCenter will shift from ESPN to ESPN NEWS going until game time.  That means, in effect, there will be a 6-hour SportsCenter produced every Sunday morning.
• At 10:00 AM, ESPN2 will air a 3-hour program on Fantasy Football.  I understand that I am one of a dwindling minority of people who ignores Fantasy Football completely; nonetheless, I am gobsmacked that there could possibly be 3 hours of relevant commentary on that subject for even one Sunday let alone for 17 of them.
• At 10:00AM, ESPNU will rebroadcast College Football Final from the day before giving the highlights of college games played on Saturday.  That is a 1-hour program and it will be repeated back-to-back-to-back 3 times taking ESPNU up to 1:  PM.

Let me channel Hank Williams, Jr. here – who will be back on MNF this year after a 5-year hiatus:

• “Are you ready for some football?”

I read a report citing data from NFL ticket resellers about the average price for a ticket on those sites for various teams.  Looking at the list, it is not surprising to note that the teams at the top are ones who are successful on the field.  The Pats’ tickets are the most expensive on average at $360 per seat.  Then come the Broncos, Falcons, Packers, Seahawks, Steelers … you get the idea.  However, in the “Top Ten” – in the #7 slot to be exact – I found the Chicago Bears.  Since the 2006 season when the Bears lost in the Super Bowl to the Colts, the Bears have been to the playoffs exactly one time.  In the intervening 10 years, the Bears’ cumulative record is 75-85.  Nevertheless, if you want to buy a ticket on the resale market for a Bears’ game at Soldier Field, be aware that the average price is $209 per fanny-receptacle.

Finally, Falcons’ resale ticket prices are through the roof but the team is going to provide low-cost concessions to fans this year.  That news led to this comment from Brad Rock in the Deseret News:

“The Atlanta Falcons are rewarding fans this year by offering soft drinks, bottled water, hot dogs and fries for $2 each, and cheeseburgers for $5.

“This is apparently to counter the taste of Super Bowl LI, which is known among Atlantans as ‘Barf in Your Mouth Day’.”

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