Category: Daily Rants

The rhythm of NFL games skips a beat at this point in January every year.  Instead of a 6-day cycle of anticipation for the next “event”, we get to wait 13 days.  I would certainly not count that as a disastrous state of affairs were it not for the added 7 days of nonsense that sports fans will endure between now and Super Bowl Sunday.  I will try not to focus on any such nonsense for the next two weeks and speak of the upcoming game only in the final edition of Mythical Picks a week from next Friday.  I know already that I will not be able to avoid some mention of happenings on Media Day next week because that event is so outrageous that it brings out a normally dormant strain of lunacy in the folks who attend.  Other than that …

The teams for the game are set; the Patriots and the Falcons have earned their places in the game; a bazillion people will tune in to see the game.  Much of the foofaraw over the next two weeks is superfluous at its very best.

About a week ago, I ran across a report about the advertising revenue that this year’s Super Bowl is expected to generate.  According to this report, FOX could take in about $500M in ad revenue for the day if you add up the revenue from the pre-game “festivities” plus the game itself plus the post-game “hosannas”.  Last year, the total revenue for super Bowl Sunday was $445M.  An interesting fact – at least it was interesting to me – from this report is that nine different automobile brands will buy ad spots somewhere in this mix of programming.

Over the weekend, profootballtalk.nbcsports.com reported that the Spring Football League that is launching this year will invite three NFL “veterans” who are not under contract to any teams at the moment to participate.  Obviously, having recognizable names would be a plus for the league; obviously, playing in these games offers those players a showcase for whatever football skills they possess.  The three “veterans” identified in the report were:

1. Johnny Manziel
2. Ray Rice
3. Vince Young

The CEO of the Spring League, Brian Woods, said that the Spring League will be happy to provide a platform for players who want to demonstrate to the football mavens that those players are still relevant and deserve employment consideration.  Granted that these three players provide a lot more name recognition to the Spring League that Joe Flabeetz would provide.  However, I am not sure that very many people will recognize those names in a sufficiently interested or positive way as to motivate them to watch those players perform in a Spring Football League otherwise populated with Joe Flabeetz and Sam Glotz and Biff Bopf.

The Indy Colts fired GM Ryan Grigson and are now on the lookout for a new GM.  This event comes a year after Colts’ owner. Jim Irsay, gave a contract extension to Grigson and to head coach Chuck Pagano despite rumors a year ago that both of them could be on the chopping block.  There was a report that Irsay had tried to contact Peyton Manning about taking the GM job in Indy but then that report was refuted – sort of and …

The situation in Indy is a precarious one.  The Colts are a bad football team with a franchise QB.  Most bad teams do not have a franchise QB and that omission from their rosters is a significant contributor to their “badness”.  What happens in Indy is that the Colts have an outstanding QB and they play in a chronically weak division meaning that they win enough games to make it seem as if they are a decent team.  The reason I say the situation there is precarious is because Andrew Luck has been injured in each of the last two years.  He had to miss time in 2015 and we recently learned that he needed post-season shoulder surgery after 2016.  The Colts do not have a roster that can protect the asset they do have that separates them from the abject bottom-feeders in the league at the moment – – the Browns, Niners, etc.

If I may use a business analogy here, the Colts have not taken out an insurance policy on the thing that makes their business competitive.  Looking at this from the outside, that situation can obtain in several ways:

1. The coaching staff may have sufficient raw material to work with but the coaching staff is not sufficiently competent to take that raw material and mold it into a functioning unit.
2. The GM/Front Office may not recognize the fundamental lack of talent on the roster in several areas and therefore makes no effort to improve those areas.
3. The owner may not be a constructive element in establishing working environment where folks can pool resources to solve common problems.
4. Or, it could be all of the above…

Back when the Colts were a very good team, the GM was Bill Polian who had an excellent track record when it came to building rosters.  After a bad season – so bad that the Colts had the #1 overall pick they would use to draft Andrew Luck – Jim Irsay decided to clean house and fired just about everyone.  What he has now is an apparently dysfunctional working environment and an obviously dysfunctional team.  If the Colts are to find a way not to squander the asset that is Andrew Luck, they need in no particular order:

• An upgraded offensive line to keep him in one piece.
• An upgraded running game – likely to come with an upgraded OL – so that he does not have to throw the ball so often.
• An upgraded defense so that he is not always playing catch-up and throwing the ball behind his porous OL.

Now let me look at some recent drafts by the Colts:

• In 2014, they took two offensive linemen.  One of them is still on the roster but is not listed on the depth chart for 2016.  I have no idea where the other one is.
• In 2015, they took one offensive lineman in the 7^th round and he is the Colts’ starting right guard.
• In 2016, they took 4 offensive linemen (including 2 centers) and all four made the squad and are on the roster.

At some point, someone “in charge” at Indy has to decide if those 7 offensive linemen taken in recent years were good picks who are still in “development mode” or if they were good picks who have been insufficiently coached to develop properly or if they were bad picks from the beginning.  It is going to take a “football guy” to sort all of that out and given the recent history of the Colts and their owner, I wonder how much of a salary premium the team will have to pay to a “football guy” to wade into that miasma.  Stay tuned …

Finally, here is a definition from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Acid:  Something you definitely have to be on to appreciate Carrot Top.”

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

 

 

The votes have been tallied and we have three new players about to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this summer.  They are:

1. Jeff Bagwell
2. Tim Raines
3. Ivan Rodriguez

If you go by the numbers, these guys all belong in the Hall of Fame and the fact that Raines was elected in his 10^th – and final – year of eligibility on the baseball writers’ ballot makes me wonder what took them so long.  There have been rumors/suspicions/suggestions that some of Bagwell’s stats were “chemically enhanced” and more than a few folks have offered up those circumstances as the basis for his delayed entry.  Please note that there has never been any solid evidence in Bagwell’s case – but rumors were sufficient in previous years.  Likewise, there had been similar hints/winks of the eye/whatevers regarding Pudge Rodriguez’ stats and “the juice”.  Once again, there was never any proof – – and yet, Rodriguez was inducted in his first year of eligibility.

The election process for the Hall of Fame is imperfect to be sure but I do not think the idea of membership in the Hall of Fame is sufficiently important to spend the time and energy to cure the imperfections.  The current process works well enough so leave it alone.

Having said that let me juxtapose two players’ career stats for you and then pose a fundamental question:

 

Player A:  He played 17 years in MLB.  His career batting average was .260; his career OBP was .299 and his career slugging average was.367.  He averaged 22 home runs and 64 RBIs per season.  He was on the All-Star Team 7 times.

Player B:  He played 17 years in MLB.  His career batting average was .290; his career OBP was .356 and his career slugging average was .500.  He averaged 27 home runs and 107 RBIs per season.  He was on the All-Star Team 5 times and he was the MVP 1 time.

 

As you have probably guessed by now, Player A is in the Hall of Fame and Player B is not.  In fact, Player B only got about 15% of the votes this time around meaning he is nowhere near the 75% level needed for election to the Hall of Fame.  Making the comparison even more interesting is the fact that Player A and Player B played the same position for the vast majority of their 17-year careers.

Player A is Bill Mazeroski; Player B is Jeff Kent.  If you “go by the numbers”, I do not understand how Mazeroski can be in the Hall of Fame and Kent be at 15% in the voting.  Does that make a lot of sense to you?

It may be difficult to untangle the jejune thought processes of the Baseball Hall of Fame voters but I doubt that it will be difficult to understand the motivation behind the announcement I want to discuss now.  FIFA announced about a week ago that it was going to expand the World Cup Tournament from 32 teams to 48 teams.  The underlying motivation is:

• More Money

Instead of breaking a 32-team field into 8 groups of 4 teams and advancing the top 2 teams from each group to a 16-team knockout round, here is the proposed new format:

1. There will be 16 groups of 3 teams; they will play one another and the top 2 teams in each group will move on.
2. That will put 32 teams into a knockout round and the survivor of that knockout round will be the World Cup champion.

The idea is to implement this new format for the 2026 tournament and to leave the current format in place for 2018 and 2022.  You may wonder why – if I am correct and added revenue is the motivation behind all of this – why FIFA would postpone implementation.  I cannot answer that definitively because I am not part of the FIFA “inner circle” but perhaps it has to do with the activities underway to provide “quarters and rations” for 32 teams at the tournaments in 2018 and 2022 and expansion of the field would be an organizational problem for the host countries that have things underway already.

Bob Molinaro had this comment regarding the expansion of the World Cup field in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:

“Futbol folly: In announcing the generally unpopular decision to increase the field at the 2026 World Cup from 32 to 48 teams, a FIFA official said expansion would give 16 more countries a ‘chance to dream.’ It also invites a lot more bad games. FIFA? It’s only dreaming of the additional $1 billion the inflated tournament will pump into its coffers.”

He is absolutely right about the additional “bad games”.  In order to get into the World Cup Tournament, teams play in qualifying rounds in their geographical sections of the world.  The only team that gets a “BYE” into the tournament is the host country.  That means in the current system, 31 of the 32 entries are there because they finished high enough in their geographic region to get an invitation; those 31 teams earned their way in.

Presumably, the same rules will apply to the 48-team field which can only mean that there will be 16 teams added to the field that would not have been deemed “good enough” to be in the Tournament with only 32 entries.  In competitive terms, that is not going to help; there are already more than a few non-competitive games in a 32-team field; imagine what will happen when a team like Germany or Spain or Brazil or Argentina gets to play “Team Number 48”.

Finally, here is a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald about another sporting decision that was made for “financially-driven reasons”:

“The San Diego Chargers are leaving for Los Angeles. Seldom has the nickname ‘Bolts’ been more fitting.”

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

 

 

Over the past couple of weeks, Aaron Rodgers has been very properly in the news spotlight for doing excellently what professional quarterbacks are paid to do.  In a recent rant, I called his performance last Sunday against the Cowboys “other-worldly”; he has been playing at an extraordinary level for more than a month now.  When that happens, he becomes a focal point for the media.

By the way, if Aaron Rodgers were to stink out the joint this weekend against the Falcons – say something like complete 35% of his passes and throw 5 INTs – that too would put him in the media spotlight simply because it is out of the norm for a player of his accomplishments.  My point here is that he belongs in the news for what he does that is newsworthy and what Aaron Rodgers does that is newsworthy is to play quarterback in the NFL.

For reasons that I do not understand, some folks have decided that the fact that Aaron Rodgers and his family are estranged is something the public needs to know.  The NY Times no less had a reporter contact Rodgers’ father and brother regarding the family issue(s).  Frankly, there is no real “investigative” information here; it is merely an updating on the status quo.

So, that leads me to wonder why this is worthy of newsprint and ink.  I wonder because this situation – reportedly having been going on for at least a year and a half and possibly longer – has not affected materially the one thing that causes you and I to pay attention to Aaron Rodgers in the first place.  From reading the various reports of this family rift, I have learned that Aaron Rodgers’ father is a chiropractor; I had not known that before; I do not feel super-enlightened now that I do know that.  If you did not know that fact prior to reading the previous sentence, that demonstrates that you did not care enough about the Rodgers’ family dynamic to know anything about any of the players other than the one who is a star quarterback.

The only reason anyone gives a fig about this matter is because Aaron Rodgers is famous for what he does.  If he were fourth on the depth chart as a quarterback playing in some semi-pro football league in Beaglebreath, SD, no one would care if he and his family were estranged or as tight as a drum.  Call that NY Times report – and all of the other reporting on this matter – what it really is:

 

Voyeurism.

 

Once you realize/admit that is what all of this is about, ask yourself as a consumer of the “news” if achieving the status of “Voyeur” is a positive thing in your life…

ESPN.com had a recent report about an upcoming TV show that falls into the “reality TV” category and therefore might be classified as “news” at some point.  The program will air on CNBC – a network devoted to financial matters most of the time – and it has a working title of Back in the Game.  Here is how it is going to work:

• The “host” will be Alex Rodriguez.  Yes, that Alex Rodriguez…
• A-Rod will find retired athletes who are in serious financial trouble and he will then set them up with “money-savvy mentors who can help them get back on their feet.”

Even though I have not seen the pilot episode for this program – and there are no circumstances that might convince me this should be on my power rotation of things to watch regularly – this is another example of the media pandering to public voyeurism.  I can be empathetic toward a former athlete who is now down on his luck but do I need to know what happened to him to get him into the situation and/or what the “money-savvy mentors” recommend he do with the rest of his life to change that situation?  To call a program of this type “obscene” is a stretch, but to call it “cringe-worthy” seems to be on the mark.

A recent comment by Brad Rock in his column Rock On in the Deseret News demonstrates how the kind of programming suggested by Back in the Game can get smarmy:

“A financial advisor has been accused of bilking millions from former NFL player Ricky Williams and ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman.

“That’s sad, but does anyone believe either of these guys couldn’t lose millions all by himself?”

Let me add one last charge to the indictment of media pandering to public voyeurism.  Last week, CBSSports.com reported that Johnny Manziel will be at this year’s Super Bowl festivities for the purpose of selling his autograph (for $99 a pop) and for allowing fans to take a selfie with him (for $50 a pop).  Those monumental revelations of course allowed for a quick retrospective of Manziel’s career arc that went from “Heisman Johnny Football“ to “Who Cares Johnny Manziel” in the matter of a couple of years.  Oh, and the report also contains  the obligatory picture of Manziel looking “half-in-the-bag” posed with a young woman somewhere.

Let me urge you to ignore these sorts of reports – and particularly that impending program on CNBC.  Following sports allows you to observe what athletes and coaches do in their chosen fields but does not force you to become a Peeping Tom into their personal lives to appreciate what they do.  Maybe one needs a voyeuristic streak to devote oneself to keeping up with the Kardashians; not so for sports fans.

Finally, to end on a lighter note today, here is a comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha-World-Herald that will allow you to flash back in your memory to Rosie Ruiz.  I’ll bet you have not done that too often recently:

“A dense fog delayed the start of the Nebraska Marathon because of almost zero visibility. This was a dream come true for anyone who’s ever wanted to run the first three yards of a marathon and then cut to the 25-mile mark.”

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

 

 

The NFL Coach of the Year has not been announced yet and all of the coaches on “division-winning teams” will get some consideration.  Among the coaches in that category, Dan Quinn (Atlanta) and Jason Garrett (Dallas) ought to get plenty of votes.  By the same token, Bill Belichick (New England), Mike McCarthy (Green Bay) and Pete Carroll (Seattle) should get less attention in this category since many folks expected them and their teams to win their division all the way back in August.  I would like to throw the names of two “non-division-winning coaches” into the pot here:

1. Jack Del Rio (Oakland):  The Raiders last made the playoffs at the end of the 2002 season; that was also the last time they had a record better than .500 for a single season.  The Raiders finished this year at 12-4 and did so with their starting QB on the shelf at the end of the season and with their second string QB out after playing about 30 minutes of football in relief.
2. Adam Gase (Miami):  The Dolphins made the playoffs for the first time since 2008 with a 10-6 record.  Like the Raiders, they had to finish the season with their starting QB on the sidelines in street clothes.

I do not expect either of these coaches to win the Coach of the Year award but they do deserve a mention in that category…

I do not want to hear any griping about Jason Garrett when it comes to Coach of the Year voting; he could well be the winner and it would not be an outrageous choice.  The fact that the Cowboys spiked the ball to preserve a timeout they never used and which gave Aaron Rodgers more time to mount a comeback in last weekend’s playoff game was a coaching decision that came back to bite him in the butt.  Had the Cowboys made a first down on that series and made the subsequent field goal, he would be considered a red-headed genius.

Jason Garrett did not lose that playoff game to the Packers any more than any single Cowboys player lost that game.  The Packers won the game because of other-worldly play by Aaron Rodgers; there is no blame to hand out to anyone in the Cowboys’ locker room for that.

The mantra performed by most of the media that covers the NFL is that you build powerhouse teams through the draft.  Ommmmm …  Through the draft ….  Ommmmm …

Well, it is just a tad more complicated than that and the perfect example to demonstrate that there is more to it than merely drafting high in the draft order is provided by the Jacksonville Jaguars.  Let me see; every year since 2012, the Jags have had a draft pick in the Top 5.  By this point, you might expect them to be on the verge of breaking out…

• In 2012, Justin Blackmon was their Top 5 pick.  If I were to say that pick was “useless” or “disastrous” I would be paying it a compliment.
• In 2013, Luke Joeckel was their top 5 pick.  He started at OT and was then moved inside to OG; reports say the Jags are looking to move him on to someone else but they did not pick up his option year to assure they could do that.  This is better than the pick in 2012 – but just about anything would be.
• In 2014, Blake Bortles was their Top 5 pick.  Let me be kind and say the jury is still out on him.  If I were not so kind, I would call this pick a “wasted opportunity”…
• In 2015, Dante Fowler was their Top 5 pick.  He missed his entire rookie season with a knee injury but looked like a competent DE in this his first year in the NFL.
• In 2016, Jalen Ramsey was their Top 5 pick.  He played extremely well in his rookie season and has been mentioned as a candidate for defensive rookie of the year.

Given that array of “Top 5 talent” one might be surprised to see that the Jags will – once again – draft 4^th in the April NFL Draft.  Indeed, having high draft picks can be a solid way to build a team from the bottom up – but it is not the draft position that is most important.  It is the selection made with those “high picks” that turns the “potential asset” into a “real asset”.  If the Jags get a bona fide starting player in this year’s draft, that will give them about a .500 batting average with Top 5 picks since 2012.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but that is just not good enough…

There was a coaching move in college football that caught my eye because it seemed like the “Great Leap Backwards” when I heard it.  Rhett Lashlee was the offensive coordinator at Auburn; he is a young coach and just about all of his coaching experience has been with Gus Malzahn’s staff at various locales.  In the last couple of weeks, Lashlee left Auburn to take the offensive coordinator position at UConn.  As a follower of college football and as someone with exactly no ties to or animus toward either UConn or Auburn, this move makes me shake my head.  Normally, I would expect a coach at UConn to take a job at Auburn if it were offered and not the reverse.

Then again; maybe the fact that Lashlee and the UConn offense will not need to confront the Alabama defense and/or the LSU defense every season makes his decision all the more sensible…

ESPN will break up Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic from ESPN Radio’s Mike and Mike in the Morning program and give Greenberg a TV hosting slot.  I am not a huge consumer of ESPN Radio but it does seem to me that Mike and Mike is the flagship in the fleet so I do wonder why the suits are breaking that up – – unless there is some behind the scenes friction that is not apparent at all on the air.

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

“Peyton Manning was at the Music City Bowl. And you thought the guy shouting ‘Omaha! Omaha!’ throughout the game was rooting for Nebraska?”

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

 

 

 

In last week’s Mythical Picks, I deferred comment on two NFL news items from last week until today.  The first is the decision by the LA Rams to hire Sean McVay as their new head coach even though he has not quite yet been able to celebrate his 31^st birthday.  Some have disparaged that decision based on his age saying he is too young to lead a locker room “full of men”.  While these naysayers may indeed have their ageist comments vindicated in the future, what they are saying is equivalent to someone else saying that Joe Flabeetz is too old and too frail to lead a locker room full of men because good ol’ Joe is 69 years old.  There is one job that comes to mind where McVay’s age is absolutely disqualifying; that job would be President of the United States.  Article II of the US Constitution says very specifically:

“…neither shall any person be eligible to that Office [the Presidency] who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years …”

I understand that the NFL would have all of us believe that being a head coach of an NFL team is a monumental undertaking, but I submit that it is merely a very high-paying job with a lot less job security than lots of other high paying jobs.  If Sean McVay “fails” in LA, it will probably have much more to do with the players he can put on the field than it will with the number of crop cycles he has experienced in his lifetime.

For the record, I think the idea of hiring a young first-time coach is preferable to hiring a “retread”.  Yes, I know all about Bill Belichick as a “retread”.  I also know about lots of other “retreads” hired into the NFL who were not significantly more successful in their second gig as they were in their first gig.

I do not want to leave the impression that I think the Rams or McVay are destined for greatness because of this “bold move” by the Rams.  Perhaps they are; perhaps they are not.  There have been great coaches who have been hired at an early age:

• John Madden
• Shula the Elder – aka Don
• Mike Tomlin.

There have also been stinkbombs hired at an early age:

• Lane Kiffin
• Josh McDaniel
• Raheem Morris
• Shula the Younger – aka David.

The other topic from last week is the relocation of the San Diego Super Chargers to LA to be co-tenants with the Rams in the new stadium complex being built by Rams’ owner Stan Kroenke.  I am not surprised by the move; the Chargers and the movers and shakers in San Diego have been at odds for at least 10 years over the Chargers “need” for a new stadium.  When a referendum posited as a last and final chance went down to a landslide defeat in November 2016, the die was cast.  Having said all of that, I do not think that the Chargers’ owners wanted to move the franchise to begin with and I doubt that the Chargers would want to be the junior tenants in the LA development project headed up by the Rams.  And that is just the beginning of what I suspect might be a less-than-smart set of decisions by the NFL owners.

Los Angeles had two NFL teams in the past and both of them moved out of town.  Yes, there were “stadium issues” that were involved in the departures then but there were also issues of less-than-robust support for those teams.  For about the last 20 years, the NFL football fans in LA may not have had a team, but here is what they did have:

• On Sundays, they got to watch on TV the best games of the day from around the league.  LA was not an exclusive market for a team; there was no “home team” that fans saw every week.  Moreover, they got to see three games on Sundays.
• Now, they will get to see the Rams and the Chargers on Sunday – every Sunday.  The only way they will get to see a Cowboys/Packers game as the “late afternoon” game on Sunday will be if one of the two local teams happens to play on Thursday, Sunday night or Monday.

I do not recall a time in the last 20 years or so when there was a huge outcry from the Joe Sixpacks of LA – or whatever the beautiful-people equivalent of Joe Sixpack may be – begging for a replacement franchise from the NFL.  Now they will have 2 teams and if the support for the Rams in their first year in LA is even a marginal indicator, there are loads of fans in LA who found better things to do with their weekends than going to see the Rams play in the flesh.  Stan Kroenke clearly wanted to move his team to LA and fans seemingly shrugged their shoulders.  Dean Spanos clearly did not want to be part of this enterprise and so what might he expect from those fans?

There is a very interesting twist to the Chargers’ decision to move to LA.  For the next two years, the Chargers will play in a stadium in Carson CA – where the Chargers and Raiders had hoped to build their own joint stadium a year ago – and that stadium was built as a soccer pitch for the LA Galaxy.  It originally had 27,000 seats and has been expanded to 30,000.  The story is that it can take another expansion and get to 40,000 and that is the plan for the Chargers.  For the next two years, the Chargers will play in what is by far the smallest stadium in the NFL.  That implies two things to me:

1. There is danger ahead for the Chargers.  What happens to the Chargers’ marketing strategy in their new home town if they cannot sell out their stadium-on-training-wheels?
2. The decision by the Chargers and the acquiescence of the NFL to their residence in a small venue opens a door for the Oakland Raiders to use in stadium negotiations.

Let me explain the second point there.  The Raiders have – reportedly – a financing deal in place for a new stadium in Las Vegas.  The flies in that ointment are that Sheldon Adelson has $650M of his money in the deal and negotiations between Mark Davis and the “Adelson family” have not been progressing well.  To me, it seems to come down to how big a share of team ownership does Adelson want for his stake in the venture.  Maybe I’m wrong…  In any event, the latest reporting by the Las Vegas Review-Journal is that the stadium financing is solid even if Adelson pulls his money out of the deal.  Here is a link to that report:

Sheldon Adelson is indeed “big money” and that means he wields plenty of power.  However, this report says that Goldman Sachs indicates that the deal is solid and Goldman Sachs represents even bigger money than Sheldon Adelson.  If correct, this report is an important element in the Raiders’ attempt to get out of Oakland.

The other fly in the ointment is that the Raiders play in a miserable venue that has needed renovation for more than a decade but they would be forced to stay there for another couple of years until the new Las Vegas playpen could be constructed.  For those 2 years, you can expect that they will not draw well in their stadium/porta-potty.  But the approval of the Chargers to play in a 40,000-seat stadium might allow the Raiders to move to Las Vegas immediately if they can find a way to play on the same field that UNLV uses for its home football games.

UNLV plays in Sam Boyd Stadium which has a seating capacity of 36,800 and can expand to 40,000 seats “when called for”.  That sounds like an acceptable temporary home for an NFL team to me if indeed the Chargers’ temporary quarters are acceptable – unless of course some old-time NFL owners want to make Mark Davis squirm and suffer because he is the spawn of their old nemesis, Al Davis.

All of this remains in flux.  I am sure we will revisit all of this.  The only sure losers in all of this are the NFL fans in LA whose TV options will not be significantly constrained as compared to a few years ago.

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

“To the list of life’s unending mysteries, add this: Why do newspapers, including my own, continually report as news whatever Mel Kiper Jr. guesses about the upcoming NFL Draft?”

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

 

 

On Facebook, they have something called Throwback Thursdays where people post old time pictures of themselves or of the town they grew up in back in the 50s or pics of their parents.  Whatever.  It does not hurt anyone nor does it rip at the fabric of Western Civilization.  So, today I want to do Curmudgeon Central’s rendition of Throwback Thursday.  I have a bunch of stuff and links stored on my clipboard and I’ll go back to them and use them as today’s fodder.  I may not be adorable, but I am adaptable…

If you are a fan of the NFL, you must have noticed by now that players wear pink “stuff” during games in October to support breast cancer awareness because that is the month designated for that activity.  My long-suffering wife lost her mother and her sister to breast cancer; our family knows the ravages of that disease – one which has been called The Emperor of All Maladies.  I do not think, however, that we are alone in being aware of breast cancer; in fact, if any adult in the US is unaware of breast cancer in 2017, I wonder what he or she might be aware of.  Those personal comments lead up to the announcement by the NFL recently that the NFL is going to end “Pink October” and allow each team to pick its own cancer charity to support.  Here is a link to a report on that decision.

The link here contains a statement of explanation by the NFL’s VP for Social Responsibility.  I do not know the person who occupies that position nor do I know any of the people who may have occupied that chair in the past.  I will say that it is an impressive title to put on one’s résumé even if I would need convincing that it was a job that would taxing to one’s energy or intellect.  The benefit to me as a viewer of NFL games in October is that I will not necessarily see players running around with bubble-gum pink towels, shoes and headbands for an entire month.

Just asking, but what might the color be for players to wear if the team decided that its mission for the year was to support some charity involved with colon cancer…?  Cleveland Browns, anyone?

It is painfully obvious to anyone marginally above the level of “casual observer” that the NFL is determined to hype and promote events in its off-season for the purpose of keeping itself “on the newsfeeds” at least 350 days a year.  And, they are doing a great job at that.  Here is the latest wrinkle they have come up with…

• The NFL Combine is a focal point of attention for fans because it feeds into the NFL Draft which is hyped beyond rationality and that hype is Assimilated by NFL fans because it represents the “hope for the future” for one’s favorite team.   But that is not nearly enough…
• Fans can now go to the Combine and get “up close and personal” with the athletes as they go through some of the “events” such as the bench press.  Fans will also get to try their own hand at the 40-yard dash, the vertical jump and the standing broad jump.  How exciting that will be …

The NFL will hand out 6,000 “non-transferable tix” that will give fans this improved/additional access.  In addition to being close to the action in some of the events or participating in those same events, fans will be able to be up close and personal in the media area where draft hopefuls address the media and say nothing of consequence.  As if that were not nearly enough, fans can also get their picture taken standing behind the podium used during the draft and the fan can be wearing the uniform of their favorite team.  Roger Goodell will not be there to hug them, so the best they can imagine is that they were a low-round pick.  I will try to contain my joy here…

In case you think I might be making this stuff up, here is a link to the report on espn.com regarding this subject.

The first two items here are feelgood nonsense; they are as important as the letter “g” in lasagna.  This next item might actually be interesting – and if things break correctly it might even be important.  Just before Christmas, espn.com had a story that the NFL acknowledged the start of a spring football league.  This new league will be independent of the NFL; it will operate in April 2017; it will include NFL veterans who are not under contract at that time; it will employ “experienced NFL coaches”.

There will be 4 teams in the league and they will play a total of 6 games during the month of April.  Notice that the games in April will lead up to the NFL Draft and this is a way for teams to look for talent to fill rosters at that point in the calendar beyond what their college scouts have identified.  All of that sounds like a good idea to me – if not one that will provide a financial windfall to the “independent investors who have not ties to the NFL”.

Here is something else that sounds good to me:

• The NFL will use the games played in this league as part of its development program for NFL officials.

That sort of development program cannot make the officiating in the NFL more controversial than it has been for the past year or two.  It has to help.  Here is something else that the NFL might do in terms of working with this new “Spring League” to improve its own on-field product:

• Demand that the NFL Rules Committee members sit and watch all of these games and try out new rules that might be employed in the NFL.

The Rules Committee is the body that has given us the set of rules that makes it impossible to distinguish between a catch and an incompletion and to know the difference between offensive and defensive pass interference.  Those folks can use all the help and training they can get.

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

“Eagles rookie quarterback Carson Wentz bought each his offensive linemen a shotgun for Christmas.

“Luckily for them, Wentz doesn’t operate out of the wildcat formation.”

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

 

Yesterday, I noted three NFL teams that have a “quarterback conundrum” to ponder in this off-season.  Today, I will highlight three more teams that I think are in the same circumstance.  Let me be clear; I do not mean that these are the only six teams with “quarterback issues” that need to be improved.  There are lots of teams that simply do not have a quality QB on their roster that they can put on the field every Sunday.  That is not a conundrum for those teams; that problem is hardly difficult to identify; it is painfully obvious.

I think the Carolina Panthers have a quarterback question to resolve but it is not a question of who should be playing the position.  Cam Newton is their quarterback and will remain their quarterback.  The issue for the Panthers is how to transform Cam Newton from his statistically erratic performances over the past 4 years into a quarterback who consistently resembles the “good Cam Newton”.

• He had a really good year in 2013 making it to the Pro Bowl and leading the Panthers to a 12-4 record.
• Then in the subsequent year, he was not so proficient and the Panthers fell to 5-8-1 in 2014.
• Last year, Newton was other-worldly leading the Panthers to a 15-1 regular season record and a place in the Super Bowl.  For the 2015 season, he led the NFL in TD-percentage – the percent of his passes that resulted in a TD (7.1%).  He has never been the most accurate passer in the league, but in 2015 he completed 59.8% of his throws.
• In 2016, Newton and the Panthers regressed to 5-8-1.  He only completed 52.9% of his pass attempts; to put that in perspective, that ranks 30^th in the NFL behind players such as Ryan Fitzpatrick, Blake Bortles and Brock Osweiler. For all of the 2016 season he led zero game winning drives or 4^th quarter comebacks.  Seriously …

Some commentators have suggested that Cam Newton has become more concerned with his “fashion look” than with his quarterbacking.  I do not read minds; therefore, I will not try to identify cause and effect here.  What is clear to me is that the folks in charge of the Panthers need to figure out what it will take to dampen the oscillations in Cam Newton’s performance from year to year.  The Panthers know who their QB is and will be; they need him to be something like “good Cam Newton” more consistently.

The next quarterback conundrum is one that loads of NFL teams wished they had to resolve.  The New England Patriots have to decide soon what they are going to do with Jimmy Garoppolo.  He started the first two games of the season and was 42 for 59 in those two games (71.1% completions) and gained a respectable 8 yards per pass attempt.  Garoppolo turned 25 in November and will be in the 4^th year of his rookie contract for the 2017 season.  If I have the details of his contract right, he will earn about $1.2M next year from the Pats but would then become an unrestricted free agent at the end of 2017.

The Pats’ “problem” is that they have this guy named Brady playing QB for them at age 39.  Unlike most 39-year old QBs in the NFL, Tom Brady is still “getting the job done” – – and more.  So, the question for the Pats is how to maximize the value of Jimmy Garoppolo as an asset:

1. They could try to work out a long-term deal with him before he finds out what the free agent market might pay him.  Then they would have him as their successor QB for that time down the road when Tom Brady decides to ride off into the sunset.
2. They could trade him to a team that needs a young starting QB – – and there are plenty of those.
3. They could put a franchise tag – or a transition tag – on him at the end of the 2017 season but that would mean they would be paying their backup QB for 2018 something north of $20M.  That seems like a very expensive way to kick the can down the road…
4. They could just let him walk.

The 4^th option above seems unlikely – – unless the Pats’ coaches think that Jacoby Brissett, who also started 2 games for the Pats this year, is satisfactory as the “heir apparent” to Tom Brady.  Brissett is under contract with the Pats through the 2019 season at bargain-basement prices.  I think the Pats will try for Option 1 above and if that fails they will move to Option 2.  I can imagine a Cleveland Browns’ fan reading this and thinking:

If only the Browns had such a dilemma to resolve…

The last quarterback conundrum I want to discuss is one that has a simple and obvious answer; the only thing that might get in the way of arriving at that simple and obvious answer is ego.  The Skins need to have Kirk Cousins back as their QB.  Period.  Exclamation point!  The reason they must make that happen is painfully simple:

There is no QB available to the Skins who is equal to or better than Kirk Cousins.

I did not say Kirk Cousins is the best QB in the NFL; he is not.  There are 32 starting QBs in the NFL; if I rank order them, Cousins is somewhere between 9^th and 12^th on the list and the gap between 9-12 on the list and 19-22 on the list is a canyon not a rift.  The Skins were a playoff team in 2015 and missed the playoffs by a hair in 2016.  They should assure that they do not take a step backward at the QB position in this off-season.

Some have argued that the failure of the Skins to beat the Giants in Week 17 of this year shows that Cousins is not worth the “big bucks”.  Next time you hear that, ask the person who makes that point a simple question:

• What did Kirk Cousins do in that game that rendered the Skins rushing game impotent to the point that it gained the grand total of 38 yards for the entire game?

The problem for the Skins and Cousins is money and ego.  Last year, Cousins played under the franchise tag and made $20M (round numbers).  The reason he played under those conditions is that the Skins and Cousins could not arrive at a long-term deal; reports say that the Skins “low-balled” him with a $14M per year offer and reluctantly raised that to $16M per year but would not go higher for a long-term basis and were reportedly “stingy” with the amount of the contract that would be guaranteed.  Whether those reports are accurate, the fact is that Cousins made $20M for one year’s work in 2016 and is looking potentially at free agency once again.

Here are some scenarios:

• Skins can apply the franchise tag once again.  This year, it will be worth $24M for a single year and will make Cousins a potential free agent in 2018.  The reason the cost of the tag goes up is that the CBA requires a team to give a franchise player a 20% raise for the second time they get a franchise tag.
• That is only a short-term solution because the CBA has another provision about mandatory pay raises.  Should the Skins use the franchise tag in 2017 and then think they will do the same again in 2018, the mandatory pay raise would be 40%.  That means, Kirk Cousins would earn $34M (round numbers) in 2018.  There comes a point where that pay ladder is not sustainable.

The Skins need a long-term deal with Cousins but it seems as if he feels a bit “disrespected” by the team based on last year’s fruitless negotiations.  As this year’s negotiations get under way, both Cousins and the Skins contract negotiating team will need to check a little bit of their egos at the door.  Here is a stylized way to arrive at an impasse in these negotiations:

 

“Kirk Cousins”:  You didn’t think I was worth more than $16M per year last year but you paid me $20M instead.  Now you can pay me $24M for a year or you can come up with a pay scale that makes it worth my while to take anything less than $24M.  Oh, and by the way, in the next off-season when you will owe me $34M for a year as your QB, we can start the negotiating process at that level…

“Skins’ negotiator”:  You played well in 2017 and we really do want you to be our QB for the long-term in Washington.  However, we need to be pragmatic here; we missed the playoffs with you as the QB.  That fact shows that we were not “low-balling you” last year; it shows that we valued you fairly and appropriately.

 

If the Skins and Kirk Cousins wind up with nothing more than a second franchise tag for 2017, I think you will be able to chalk that up to the intervention of ego(s).

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

“Steelers kicker Chris Boswell was randomly chosen to take a drug test after his record performance against the Bengals last Sunday, making it a 7-for-7 day.

“As in, 6 for 6 on field goals and 1 for 1 on hitting the specimen cup.”

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

There are 8 NFL teams that still have games to play; the other 75% of the league is in “planning mode” assessing how they can improve over the course of the next season or two such that they will be one of the 8 teams still doing “game planning” in mid-January 2018 or 2019.  Some teams are looking for new coaches/GMs to figure out how to make that happen; other teams are analyzing their rosters and the rosters of other teams in their divisions.  The NFL is not like a string of popcorn stands on the boardwalk down by the Jersey seashore; all the NFL teams are still open for business in mid-January.

In terms of NFL success and failure, quarterbacks often get too much credit and simultaneously take too much blame for success or failure.  Nonetheless, no one who watches the NFL – even casually – would argue that having a very good QB on your roster makes it more likely that your team can succeed.  And with that sort of mindset, I would like to pose a few questions here that might just be front-and-center in the minds of a few “personnel people” in NFL Front Offices.

Carson Palmer has played 13 seasons in the NFL; he just turned 37 years old two weeks ago.  In 2015, Palmer was selected for the Pro Bowl; he led the NFL in yards per pass attempted and in QB Rating.  In 2016, his yards per pass attempt dropped a bit over 18% and his QBR indicates that he was ever so slightly above average.  Maybe that would be OK if he were playing for the Lake Woebegone Cardinals – but he plays for the Arizona Cardinals.  So, here is the question:

• With his salary cap number north of $22M (I am not a “capologist” so I am loath to be specific with a number here), is he worth it?

The folks who are in charge in Arizona need to come to a conclusion about the 2016 version of Carson Palmer vis á vis the 2015 version of Carson Palmer.  Surely, there are multiple factors involved in his statistical decline and in the team’s lesser performance over the past two seasons but the fundamental question is how much gas does he have left in the tank.  I do not know the answer to that question; I suspect that the Cardinals’ braintrust does not yet know the answer to that question; I do think that the Cardinals’ braintrust needs to figure that out – and figure that out correctly – over the next two months.

Brock Osweiler will earn $19M to play QB for the Texans next year and I believe he will count for $19M of the team’s salary cap.  (Remember, I am not a “capologist”.)  That money is guaranteed so the team will incur the cost even if Osweiler never plays a down.  The Texans made the playoffs based on a strong defense and a chronically weak division.  So, here is the question:

• That recipe for success may work again next year – but if something were to change and the Texans need to beef up the offensive production, is Brock Osweiler going to be the guy to provide the “beefing up”?

Financially, the Texans are on the hook for the 2017 season; however, what might be their assessments/plans for the team in 2018 and 2019 when Osweiler’s contract will cost the Texans $20-21M per year.  This season, he threw 14 TDs and 16 INTs just to highlight why the Texans need to pay attention here…

The Vikes have multiple questions to analyze.  The first is the health and potential availability of Teddy Bridgewater.  If he can play – some folks have said his freak injury might be career ending – he is an ever-loving bargain as a starting QB because he is still on his rookie contract.  In 2017, his salary will be in the neighborhood of only $2.2M; obviously, if he can play, the Vikes will want to keep him around.  And then there is Sam Bradford…

Sam Bradford is cursed with having been the first overall pick in the draft in his coming out year.  He is 29 years old so he has plenty of tread on the tires; in 2016 he led the NFL in percentage completion (70.1%) which looks good until you also see that he averaged only 7.0 yards per pass attempt.  Remember above, I pointed out that Carson Palmer’s years per attempt had dropped 18% from 2015 to 2016; well, even at that reduced level of production, Palmer averaged more than Bradford.  In 2017, Sam Bradford’s contract calls for him to earn $18M.  He is due a $4M roster bonus in March 13 and payment of that bonus guarantees a $14M salary for the 16-game NFL season in 2017.  So here is the multi-level question:

1. Is Teddy Bridgewater going to be able to play at anything near his previous level in 2017?
2. If so, do the Vikes think they are enough of a contender to want to keep an expensive backup on hand in case of another injury to Bridgewater?
3. If not, are they satisfied to go through 2017 with Sam Bradford at the helm?

Make no mistake, the Vikes have another difficult choice to deal with in this offseason that may have peripheral impact on their QB decision.  Adrian Peterson missed 13 games in 2016; back in 2014 he missed 15 games; in between those two unproductive seasons here is what he did in 2015:

• Led the NFL in rushing attempts (327)
• Led the NFL in yards gained (1427)
• Led the NFL in rushing TDs (11)
• Led the NFL in yards per game (92.8)

Adrian Peterson’s contract for 2017 calls for him to make $18M and the Vikes have to exercise an option to keep him on their roster at that salary by February 5 – which is 26 days from today.  I think the folks who run the Vikes have a lot of homework to do over the next 4-8 weeks…

There are three other teams that will need to make some decisions about their quarterback situation but I will save that discussion until tomorrow.  Until then, here is a very cogent observation from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times:

“Forbes has named Scarlett Johansson the top grossing star of 2016.

“Only because cameras weren’t there to catch Vince Wilfork’s towel fall off in the sauna.”

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

 

 

In a previous rant, I said that I agreed with the decisions made by Leonard Fournette and Christian McCaffrey to sit out second-tier bowl games and focus on getting ready to be drafted into the NFL.  I characterized it as an economic decision made by the players in response to the economic decisions by the schools and networks and cities to have so many less-than-important college football bowl games.  I stand by those remarks.  Now I want to add to them…

Another way to look at decision making is to consider the dichotomy often presented by idealism and pragmatism.  Ideally, I can wish for the non-existence of world hunger; pragmatically, there are too many people living in areas where growing food is nigh on to impossible.  Taking the life-and-death element out of my example, McCaffrey and Fournette had a similar dichotomy to resolve.  Ideally, they would have been with their teammates – their comrades-in-arms so to speak – for one final attempt at winning for dear old alma mater.  Pragmatically, they risked serious injury which might cost them millions of dollars as a pro football player – or even the chance ever to become a pro football player.  They chose pragmatism.  Once again, I agree with their decision.  Moreover, Christian McCaffrey can look to one of his comrades-in-arms for affirmation.

Stanford QB, Keller Chryst tore up his knee in the Sun Bowl game.  Stop 10 people randomly on the street and ask them to answer the following questions without resorting to Google on their cell phones:

1. Where is the Sun Bowl game played?  [El Paso, TX]
2. Who won the Sun Bowl last year?  [Washington St. beat Miami (FL)]
3. What team has been to the Sun Bowl the most times?  [Texas Tech]

Your random person will not know these answers indicating to you that the Sun Bowl – old as it may be – is not a critically important fixture on the landscape of college football.  Keller Chryst – like Christian McCaffrey – aspires to play in the NFL; he suffered a significant injury in a meaningless contest.  Give me pragmatism every time…

Reasoning one’s way through a set of circumstances to arrive at a conclusion or a decision is something adults do all the time.  Some decisions are easy; it is a bad idea to take your life savings plus your kids’ college funds and lay the total on the line for one spin of the roulette wheel.  One’s reasoning faculties need not be honed to a fine edge for that one.  Simplistic reasoning – the kind that often leads to baffling decisions – abounds in the human experience and there is probably no place where it exists and flourishes to a greater degree than in sports radio “discussions”.  What continues to amaze me is the degree of simplistic reasoning that seems to exist and flourish in the upper echelons of NFL franchises.

A team needs to pep up its offense so the idea is to fire the current coach despite whatever circumstances have led to the feeling of displeasure with team performance lately and go out and hire an “offensive guru”.  That sounds so simple – and indeed it is simplistic as evidenced by the fact that sometimes it works (Adam Gase in Miami) and sometimes it does not (Chip Kelly in SF).  The obverse is also true; hiring a “defensive guru” sometimes works (Dan Quinn in Atlanta) and sometimes does not (Rex Ryan in Buffalo).  I mentioned earlier this week that the Bills’ opening was the least desirable one for coaching candidates due to the QB situation there and the franchise location itself.  I would like to add to the reasons that the Bills’ job is not a job for hot prospects to salivate over.

According to reports this week, the firing of Rex Ryan and the search for a new coach in Buffalo will be more than a tad unusual.  In a press conference this week, the Bills’ GM – who is presumably staying on with the team – told his audience that he had not been part of the discussion between the owner and Ryan that led to Ryan’s firing with one week to play in the season.  Doug Whaley said he was “not privy to the details” from the Bills’ owner, Terry Pegula, regarding the reason that Ryan was fired.  When asked if he agreed with the decision or not, Whaley responded, “I haven’t even thought about it.”  Seriously?  Not once over the past couple of weeks?  Haven’t you spoken with the owner even once over that period of time?

Right after the firing was announced, owner, Pegula, said that GM, Whaley, would conduct the search for a new coach – – which is pretty much standard procedure when a GM stays on after a coach has been let go.  This week, Whaley left that up in the air saying that Pegula would make the final decision on the new coach.  Maybe that is only a nuance in the sense that the owner signs all the checks and therefore indeed makes all the final decisions.  However, there was another troubling comment from Whaley.  He also said that details such as who would have control over the makeup of the 53-man roster would be part of the search process and the final negotiations with the new coach.  Can that possibly mean that the coaching search will start out with no firm organizational concept for how the team will function outside the lines on Sundays?  If so, WOW!

Do not misinterpret; I am not surprised that Rex Ryan got fired in Buffalo nor do I think his firing was a bad idea.  Ryan took over a team that was 9-7 with a dominating defense that appeared poised to be in the playoffs on the strength of that defense.  In 2014, the Bills led the NFL in sacks and were 4^th in the league in points allowed.  In two years under Ryan, the defense has sagged significantly to the point where it is 28^th in the NFL in rushing yards allowed per game.  I doubt that any coach on the planet could have won 10 or 11 games with this Bills’ team.  I wonder if the owner and/or the GM recognize the significance and/or the scope of the shortcomings there.

The only thing that can make simplistic reasoning worse than it is intrinsically would be to add three elements to it:

1. Ignorance of the basics of the field in which reasoning and decisions must exist.
2. Ignorance of one’s own fundamental ignorance therein.
3. Impatience.

Purely reading reports on this matter and having exactly no direct insight here, I smell some of each of these elements in the air in Buffalo.  Or, maybe someone just passed gas…

Finally, Greg Cote had this comment in the Miami Herald several weeks ago:

“Tickets went on sale this week for sailing’s 2017 America’s Cup in Bermuda. God I hope I’m not too late!!”

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

 

 

Let me lead off today by saying that I do not enjoy nor do I follow closely MMA as a sport.  I recognize and acknowledge that the participants in that sport are dedicated athletes and that other folks are avid consumers of the sport.  I am not.

Having said that, I wonder if the time has come for Ronda Rousey to back down as the “face of women’s MMA fighting”.  As I said, I do not follow MMA closely so I could easily have missed some happenings along the way here but here is the “timeline” I see:

• Rousey uses her judo skills (Olympic medalist there) to dominate women’s MMA opponents.  She garners the image of the “baddest woman on the planet” except she is also interested in doing photo shoots and movies and other “girly things”.
• She wins an MMA championship and is booked to defend it and she is KO’ed by a woman who then proceeds to lose her next fight.
• After a period of time “incommunicado”, Rousey resurfaces and is booked to fight a current MMA champion.  She lasts less than a minute in that fight and “goes to Coventry” once again.

People are now debating/analyzing what is her future in the sport and what her legacy might be.  May I suggest the following:

• Her legacy is that her early dominance in the sport raised the level of attention to women’s MMA bouts to the point where people cared as much about them as they did to men’s MMA bouts.
• Her last two defeats – neither of which was a “squeaker” – indicates that she needs to retire from the sport before she gets hurt in some sort of permanent fashion.  I actually watched her recent loss on YouTube where she was totally dominated for 48 seconds before the fight was over.   She could not have caught any more punches had her face been magnet and her opponent were wearing iron gloves.
• In the past, I have characterized MMA promotions as being the same as pro ‘rassling except the blood is real and the punches actually land.  It is the last part of that description that – I believe – makes it really good idea for Ronda Rousey to retire from the sport and go on to “future endeavors”.

MMA as a sport does not need to have one of its competitors killed on “live TV” in one of their pay-per-view events.  This happened to boxing on several occasions on TV and you may notice that there is precious little boxing on TV any more.  Ronda Rousey in the fight I just watched was like a javelin catcher; she was a significant injury waiting to happen.

Switching gears …  Last week, I happened to be grazing through the channels on my cable package and happened across the Sixers/Nuggets game in Denver.  I stopped to look for a while just because I wanted to see how bad the Sixers were this year – – as compared to how bad they have been for the past several years.  I have to admit that I was surprised to see that the Sixers played like an NBA team.

• Joel Embiid is the real deal.  He can score inside; he can shoot from the outside; he can rebound and his defense – more than just his shot blocking – is good.
• Nerlens Noel can play defense but is an offensive liability.
• Jahlil Okafur did not play while I was watching.
• Dario Saric will be a player in the NBA for a long time; he is only 22 now.
• What the Sixers do not have is quality point guards – or even one quality point guard.  If they had a more balanced roster, this team might actually win 25 games in a season.  Trust the process…

If you had told me before the college football season started and the pairings were announced that any team in the country would score 49 points on the USC defense, I would have wondered:

1. How did Texas Tech get paired against USC with Tech’s 5-7 regular season record?
2. Did USC score 80 points on the Tech defense – –  or 90?

Well, last night in the Rose Bowl – the granddaddy of them all as Keith Jackson was wont to remind us all – Penn State’s offense did a number on the USC defense.  USC was a 7.5 point favorite in the game and the Total Line was 59.5.  Anyone betting the UNDER could have torn up their tickets in the third quarter; anyone betting the chalk knew this game was a goner.

I have been saying for much of the season in various Mythical Picks commentaries that Penn State RB, Saquon Barkely, is a special player.  I hope you got to see some of his runs against a very good USC defense last night; this kid can play!  I have also been very impressed with USC freshman QB, Sam Darnold, and he was the architect of the USC victory last night.  USC won the game on a last second field goal ending a game that was as entertaining and interesting as any bowl game so far this year.

Finally, the NCAA permits college athletes to accept “gift packages” from the organizers of bowl games as a thank you for their participation.  Here is a comment on that reality by Brad Rock in the Deseret News:

“Gift packages from bowls vary, though usually they include excellent swag for the participants. But this year’s national championship game might feature the most enigmatic.

“The description says players will be presented with an ‘iconic gift.’

“Won’t they be surprised when they open those Regis Philbin Christmas CDs?”

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