Daily Rants | The Sports Curmudgeon

Tuesday Musings …

There is a report on CBSSports.com this morning saying that a Philadelphia Eagles’ fan tweeted to Terrell Owens and to Chad Johnson about their interest in coming to the Eagles to augment what is a sub-standard corps of wide receivers on the team. Owens said he is “available”. Pigs will not only fly before the Eagles sign Owens again; pigs will have their own space program before the Eagles sign Owens again. This is not a mystery novel; the “criminal” is not required to “return to the scene of the crime”.

The NFL trade deadline is today. There have been plenty of trade rumors going around for the past couple of days – including ones involving the Eagles chasing WRs from teams going nowhere this year – but one rumor that was not out there became reality yesterday. The Pats traded LB, Jamie Collins, to the Browns for a 3rd round pick in the 2017 Draft. The first reaction many folks had to this announcement was shock and amazement. As the day wore on, I heard various “NFL insiders” saying that Collins had been offered a contract extension in the $11M per year range and had turned it down and that he would be a free agent come March 2017. Additionally, one said that Collins was looking at getting “Von Miller Money” which was 6 years and $114M. If that report is correct, the Patriots made a great deal because Jamie Collins is a very good linebacker but he is not nearly in Von Miller’s class as a defensive player.

Paying Jamie Collins anything near $19M per year on a long-term deal makes about as much sense as the Eagles bringing Terrell Owens back into their locker room.

In the last week or so, two veteran NFL players announced that they will retire in mid season. Andre Johnson is calling it quits during his 14th season in the NFL. Johnson had five seasons with more than 100 receptions; three times he led the league in receiving yards per game; twice he led the league in receiving yards; twice he was named as a first team All-Pro. Andre Johnson will be in the Hall of Fame one of these days but Father Time simply caught up with him in 2016.

Last week, Arian Foster announced that he was retiring at age 30; he has had groin and hamstring injuries this year and has had injury issues in recent seasons including a ruptured Achilles tendon that sidelined him for most of one season. I always liked the “Adrian Foster Story”. He was an undrafted free agent who led the NFL in rushing in his second year in the NFL with more than 1600 yards in that season. What I liked about Foster was his intelligence and his willingness to tell the truth.

He admitted to taking “illegal benefits” while he was in college at Tennessee. Per his recounting, he and other players had no money nor any food and when they asked the coach for something to eat, he bought them tacos. That is an NCAA “illegal benefit”.

I also liked the fact that Foster was his own person. His parents are Muslim and he grew up in that environment but Foster is a professed atheist. There are more than 1500 NFL players on rosters this year; Arian Foster’s religious beliefs – or more properly his non-beliefs – are clearly unusual among his peers. Moreover, he is willing to speak about his non-beliefs when asked. Foster was a philosophy major in college – – again not a typical major for your typical NFL player – – and he has written and continues to write poetry. Arian Foster was a very good player who was interesting to watch; Arian Foster is an interesting person who just might have a career in broadcasting somewhere down the line.

The furor over Giants’ kicker Josh Brown and his domestic violence issues seems to have abated once the Giants released Brown and he is no longer in the league. Now that things have calmed a bit, I want to comment on one small part of that story that seems to have been glossed over.

Brown was in therapy/rehab trying to resolve whatever issues led him to become a spousal abuser. That act does not justify in any way what he did; spousal abuse – or violence against women in non-domestic settings – is fundamentally abhorrent. Seeking professional help to remove oneself from whatever drives one to do such things is a positive response to that abhorrent behavior; it indicates that, de minimis, the perpetrator has some interest in behaving in more constructive ways.

As part of that therapy/rehab, Josh Brown kept a diary recounting his actions and his feelings as he was in treatment. That diary became public during this investigation/exposé. In an age where privacy concerns have led to laws that require my dentist to protect my dental history of cavities and fillings from prying eyes, that diary kept by Josh Brown as part of his mental health therapy was made public.

In no way, do I condone what Josh Brown did with regard to his personal life and his relationship with his former wife. Likewise, I do not condone whatever happened to made Josh Brown’s “therapeutic diary” a matter of public record.

According to a report on profootballtalk.com, one of the issues that may be under negotiation for the next NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement is the 18-game regular season schedule. The current CBA has 4 more years to go; I surely hope we do not have to debate that issue for the next 4 years. Here is what I do hope happens over the next 4 years:

2. The NFL Exhibition Season is reduced from 4 games to 2 games – with or without any agreement to go from a 16-game regular season to an 18-game regular season. The most wildly anticipated NFL exhibition game does not come close to the interest fans have in a Browns/Jags regular season “showdown”.

Finally, with the World Series drawing to a conclusion and with the NFL season in full swing, consider these comments from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“The Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians are playing each other in the World Series. I always thought this would take place on the recently colonized Jupiter.

“What a year for Cleveland sports. The Cavaliers won an NBA title, the Indians are in the World Series and the Browns almost made a first down.”

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

College Football Replays

A little over a month ago, Bob Molinaro had this to say in his column in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:

“Time will tell: Even people who love the sport have to admit that something needs to be done about the length of college football games.

“The replays are excruciating. After just one week, I’ve had enough of college booth officials searching for ‘indisputable evidence’ after halting games for a ‘further review’ that almost always confirms the on-field call. Are the games really better for all this?”

The answer to that final question here is that the games – in the plural – are certainly not better for any of that sort of stuff but one individual game might be better if a critical call was muffed by the on-field officials and then made right by the “replay guys”. The difficulty in the calculation here lies in Professor Molinaro’s correct observation that the replay review almost always confirms the call on the field. Therefore, fans pay frequently but receive anything of value only once in a great while. It is frustrating; there is no getting around that.

Perhaps the solution to this problem in college football – – and a couple of other sports where replay is now part of the action/inaction – – is found in this snarky remark by Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“The NBA D-League is experimenting with a 75-second time limit on instant replay reviews. There’s something similar in college football, where reviews are now limited to 2½ days.”

I am less frustrated by the number of reviews than I am by the length of time taken by the folks doing the reviewing. I think 75 seconds is plenty of time to resolve 99% of the issues that call for review. It will be interesting to see how that D-League experiment works out.

By the way, having gone to several minor-league baseball games this summer, having a 20-second “pitch-clock” does not ruin the game of baseball. It is amazing how pitchers at that level are actually able to get themselves in a rhythm to deliver a pitch in that amount of time. In fact, the vast majority of pitches are made well within that time limit.

There is another problem with college football replays that goes beyond the annoyance of interrupting the flow of games and making the games seem eternal. As some of the major conferences have moved to a system where replays are monitored in a central location and then communicated to the officials on the field, these conferences have set themselves up for criticism and charges of “self-interest”. When a call goes in favor of a team that needs to win in order to stay in contention for a CFP slot and that call is made in a “dark room” several hundred miles from the game venue by a bunch of people who represent the conference that would benefit from that team getting into the CFP … You can easily see how the conspiracy theorists can spin that one into orbit.

The use of a centralized command center to do the reviews ought to speed up the review process since officials need not spend time “under the hood”. However, there are paranoid fans out there spring-loaded to proclaim that any important call that goes against their team is part of a master plan somewhere that requires their team to take a kick in the goolies.

During the NBA Exhibition Season, I read a report somewhere that some folks were “live-Tweeting” one or several of the NBA exhibition games. This behavior is mystifying to me on just about every level:

2. Since the game is meaningless and will continue to be meaningless, why would anyone waste the energy to “Tweet” about it? Unless, of course, the real reason to “Tweet” about it has nothing to do with the game but has everything to do with some narcissistic need to tell the world, “Hey! Look at me!”

3. Whether the game is a meaningless one – or a championship game – why would anyone bother to read someone else’s Tweets about the game? If I care about a game, I will watch it and draw my own conclusions/derive my own enjoyment from it. If I do not care enough to watch, then why would I care what anyone else had to say about it?

I am a strong supporter of free expression. Having said that, I would not object to a limitation on “Freedom of Tweeting” if in fact Tweeting Exhibition Games is a real phenomenon that takes root in our society. Just as you cannot yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, I think one should not be allowed to pollute the Internet with Exhibition Game Tweets. The penalty for a violation of that standard should be six months with your smartphone housed in a Faraday Cage – – where there are no signals going into the cage to the phone or out of the cage from the phone. That ought to give the perpetrator time to reflect on how man existed as a species before some twit invented Twitter.

Finally, here is an item from Brad Rock’s column “Rock On” in the Deseret News from last week:

“Washington State coach Mike Leach says he doesn’t really see the point of team captains.

“On Monday he told the media, ‘All the guy really does is the coin toss.’

“Leach continued, ‘And then I decided one of the most screwed up things about this country is in order to do anything, to cross the street, we have a committee. So, I figured … we really only need one guy. And he’s gotta be smart enough to either call heads or tails. That’s it.’

“Why is this man not the President?”

Memo to Brad Rock:

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

The Start Of The NBA Season

Unless you are a Cubs’ fan, Game 1 of the World Series was a good game to watch. Jon Lester pitched well; the combination of Corey Kluber and Andrew Miller pitched excellently. It was good, sound, fundamental baseball on both sides all night long.

Joe Buck said during the game last night that Francisco Lindor and Javier Baez played against each other in high school. Wow! That must have been a top-shelf high school league/conference. It is a treat to watch either or both of those guys play the game.

With the NBA season underway, let me get a few NBA comments on the record here:

They will play 1230 regular season games to figure out which other teams will be in the playoffs in order to set up a Cavs/Warriors final series. Yes, I know the Warriors got beaten badly in their opener last night; that does not make the other 1229 regular season games any the more relevant.

2. Out in Las Vegas last week, the odds on winning the NBA Championship were:

Warriors

Field

You could get plus odds” on the other 29 teams to win it all next June. Wake me when we get there…

3. Out in Las Vegas last week, the odds that the Warriors would win the Pacific Division were 1-to-50. Seriously, I have witnesses who saw it on the board …

4. The guys I feel sorry for are the beat writers and the columnists in NBA cities who will have to find ways to present some pretty obvious and tired storylines to local fans from now until sometime in April or June depending on how far in the playoffs the local side goes. In a sense, that means the writers in places like Philly or Brooklyn or Miami have it better than writers in some other cities. Their extended nightmare will be shorter.

The NBA allowed teams to sell promotion patches for the front of their uniforms this year. The Sacramento Kings will be sporting a 6.25 square inch logo for Blue Diamond Almonds. The terms of the deal were not announced, but I read one report that said it was a 3-year deal worth $5M per year to the Kings. I like Blue Diamond Almonds – particularly the smoked almonds – but I am mystified as to why anyone would think that putting that logo on a basketball jersey for a bad team is going to attract new consumers to the product. Obviously, someone in the almond marketing business thinks there is $15M of benefit to accrue from this exposure, but I don’t get it.

In another marketing/promotional deal that I do not understand at all, the NBA announced a few weeks ago that ExxonMobil is an “official marketing partner” of the NBA, the WNBA and the NBA D-League here in the US and in China. That makes Mobil 1 motor oil “the official motor oil of the NBA, the WNBA and the D-League here and in China. Pardon me, but what the Hell does that mean?

When NBA teams fly from town to town, does the plane always use ExxonMobil aviation fuel?

It must be comforting for folks in the corner offices at NBA Hqs to realize that the Kings no longer play in ARCO Arena. Think of the conflict of interest situations this new deal would present in that town…

Whenever deals like this are announced, there is always a high-fallutin’ statement offered as to why the new deal is the best thing ever. Naturally, that happened here too. Here is what an NBA Senior VP had to say on the matter:

“We are proud to partner with ExxonMobil, a distinguished global company and proven industry leader. The Mobil 1 brand is synonymous with technology leadership and outstanding performance, and we’re looking forward to bringing these shared values to life for our fans in two of our biggest markets.”

If you immediately asked yourself, “What?” “How?” “Why?” after reading that, join the crowd…

As is traditional, someone from ExxonMobil also had a chance to put together some random words designed to make normal people scratch their heads. In this case, it was a VP for marketing:

“By partnering with the NBA, ExxonMobil can engage consumers across the United States and China, also two of our largest markets, to extend our brands’ recognition, help reinforce our leadership position, and distinguish our products in today’s competitive global marketplace.”

To which I say, “Huh? If you say so …”

Here is what I think all of this comes down to:

For the upcoming season – most of which will consist of unimportant and uninteresting games – you are going to see a lot of ExxonMobil signage and logos in NBA arenas and on NBA telecasts. Also, if you go to an Exxon gas station to fill up your car with gas, you will see NBA-themed signage. There will probably also be some sort of sweepstakes offered by ExxonMobil that will get “some lucky fan” tickets to the NBA Finals or to the NBA All-Star Game.

I’ll slow down here so you can catch your breath…

Finally, here is an NBA relevant comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“Miami Heat guard Tyler Johnson, who played only 36 games last season and has averaged 7.4 points in his career, said he threw up after hearing the team offered him $50 million. Tyler, that makes two of us.”

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

College Football Doings

The Big 12 Conference announced that it was not going to expand at this time – meaning they will not add 2 teams to put 12 teams in the conference. At the moment, there are only 10 teams but the conference has to be the Big 12 because the name “Big 10” is already taken – – by a conference that has 14 member institutions. Obviously, not enough student-athletes graduated with degrees in math to go to work in Athletic Departments to handle these arithmetic concepts for the moguls there.

I think the Big 12 is on a precipice; it is currently considered a major football conference based on the heritage from which it sprang. However, it needs to add quality to its roles because in recent years it has been losing teams:

There are two dominant programs in the Big 12 – – Oklahoma and Texas. As long as they stay in the conference and as long as both programs to not render themselves into oblivion, the Big 12 will command some national attention. However, if either of those schools were to leave for greener pastures, what would be left of the Big 12 would be a football conference that is not significantly more relevant than C-USA. I’d call it the Bog 12.

There were rumors and “reports” – all denied – that the major TV networks paid the Big 12 to decide not to expand. The presumed basis for such payments was that the networks had contracts with the other major conferences and were happy to maintain the status quo in college football for the time being. I strongly suspect that these rumors are pure balderdash; I hope those strong suspicions are not wishful thinking. The NCAA loves to talk about the “integrity of the games”; if those sorts of under-the-radar payments are going on, I am far more worried about “game integrity” now than I was prior to reading those “reports”.

I will not pretend to understand all the politics and economics that come into play with regard to the Big 12 and its member schools. I will say this however:

Of the 5 most important football conferences in the country, the Big 12 is the least prestigious with the smallest national following. Moreover, the gap between the Big 12 and the other 4 important conferences is growing year by year.

In the last couple of weeks, two schools have fired their football coaches. I have no idea why those firings had to be done in mid-season as opposed to happening 3 minutes after the final whistle blew in the last game of the year. Neither school is going to “turn things around this year” and go to a bowl game thanks to the coaching change. I guess that these firings are symbolic acts to demonstrate the potency of the athletic departments and/or the big donors at those schools. If I am right, then those entities have demonstrated their power and their dominance. The question I would pose however is this:

If you guys are so big and so tough and so smart, how did you let your precious football program get into this mess in the first place?

Purdue fired Coach Darrell Hazell. Look, Hazell had not been super-successful in his tenure at Purdue; I understand that. What I do not understand is what benefit Purdue hopes to reap from the mid-season separation. As of this morning, Purdue has a 3-4 record with wins over:

Purdue’s losses have been:

If you find that unimpressive, consider that Hazell had been at Purdue for a while; this was his 4th year there. His record was 9-33 and he never won back-to-back games in his tenure. If I counted correctly, Purdue has gone 3-24 in conference games during his time there. So, that performance was OK all during the off season between 2015 and 2016 but suddenly became intolerable given the mediocrity that was evident on the field this year. Really?

The other mid-season firing was at Fresno St.; the school parted company with Coach Tim DeRuyter this week with the team record standing at 1-7. If that is all you look at, you might think this firing is not only justified but may have been late in coming. However, if you look a bit closer, you will see that DeRuyter took over the program for the 2012 season after the team went 4-9 the year before. He won 9 games in 2012 and then won 11 games in 2013. For the first two years at Fresno St., his teams went 20-6 and went to bowl games both years.

In 2014, the team just made bowl-eligibility and finished with a 6-8 record but things turned south in 2015 with a record of 3-9 and now this year’s 1-7 record. Overall, DeRuyter’s record at Fresno St was 30-30. The team cannot achieve bowl-eligibility in 2016; once again, I do not see the purpose or the urgency of a mid-season termination.

Finally, here is a news item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times that may give you an incentive to save your pennies:

“Ferrari claims it’s coming out with the fastest convertible ever.

“No word about top-end speed, but your wallet goes from $2.2 million to zero in just 3.5 seconds.”

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

Miscellany Today …

I want to use today to clean up some items from my clipboard. Before I get to that, however, I want to note that the World Series must produce a champion for a fanbase that has waited a LONG time between championships. If your favorite team is not participating, check the Series out anyway. It will be good to see the reactions of the winning fans – and given the way both teams have been playing, it ought to be a really good bunch of baseball games.

A couple of weeks ago, I posed the question as to when NFL on-field celebrations started on the road to “jackassery”. I suggested Billy “White Shoes” Johnson and Harold Carmichael as early proponents of such behavior. I got an e-mail from the reader in Houston who is a sports historian/stat guru extraordinaire. Here is what he provided:

Wide receiver, Homer Jones, of the Giants was the first player to ever spike the ball (1965). That was in a game vs. Philly at Yankee Stadium and can be considered the first end-zone “celebration”. Following the 1964 season, the NFL had imposed a $500 fine (today, it’s $5,787 for the first offense), if a player threw the football into the stands after scoring a touchdown. So when Jones caught his first TD, a long TD pass from Earl Morrall, he was ready to throw the ball into the stands, but because of the $500 fine (Jones was making $10,000 at the time), he thought twice about it and instead threw the ball down into the end zone. It was a short, almost back-handed throwdown – not the mega-spike we’re used to seeing. He called it “The Spike” when asked about it by a reporter and the name was born. He continued “spiking” the ball over his career on each of his ensuing 35 TD catches and one rushing TD. Other players started to copy it.

As far as dancing in the end zone is concerned, Billy “White Shoes” Johnson is given most of the credit for that. Johnson was already known for his flamboyance, as he got his nickname by dyeing his football spikes while in high school and college.

But it was actually my fellow Houstonian, KC wide receiver Elmo Wright, who began the practice of “high-stepping” into the end zone at the end of long touchdown receptions. He did it at the University of Houston and then in his rookie year, he first did it in a game vs. the Redskins. While this was no comparison to the antics later displayed by such famed celebrators as Johnson, Ickey Woods, Jamal Anderson, Terrell Owens, etc., it was sort of shocking at the time and was made famous by NFL Films highlights. After seeing Wright do his thing in the end zone, Johnson got the idea for his “Funky Chicken” dance and did so for the first time in a game as a rookie vs. the Steelers in 1974. The rest is history.

So, now we all know…

There is another NFL-related item on my clipboard. Yesterday, the Giants and Rams played the second of three regular season games in London. The venue was Twickenham – which is a rugby pitch and not a soccer pitch; the stadium seats 82,000 and it looked awfully full to me. The game started at 9:30 AM Eastern Time – that would be 6:30 in Las Vegas. You just know that had to have a chilling effect on the number of people watching that game. Nevertheless, the NFL is persistent in playing games there and it has an agreement to play a game in the new stadium being built for the Tottenham Hotspurs in London starting in 2018. I know more than a couple of NFL fans who believe that these “London Games” have gone past their “sell-by date” but the NFL obviously disagrees. I think there are two reasons why:

2. The players cannot hate this. If they did, they would have started to leak stories about how awful it is to go there to play so that it might become a bargaining chip in the next CBA negotiations. Fans can imagine that players/coaches do not like their routines to be jostled or that traveling across the pond produces too many dreaded “distractions”; but if these were burning issues, I would expect to have heard things by now related to how to cut down the number of these trips. I have not heard/read any such thing…

Oh, by the way, another reason the players and the NFLPA ought to like “London Games” is that if they succeed in goosing revenue up, that means there is more money to share with the players because that means the salary cap goes up too …

One more NFL-related note… The saga of spousal abuse by NFL players came back to center stage recently in the Josh Brown Matter. Obviously, the NFL did not learn much from the bungling that it exhibited in the Ray Rice Affair. In the aftermath of that debacle, the NFL instituted a policy that set 6 games as the benchmark suspension for spousal abuse/assault and battery/etc. To my knowledge, they have yet to impose a 6-game ban in any case because they always seem to find “mitigating circumstances’. Brown was suspended for one game earlier this year; more evidence came to light recently that indicates his abusive behavior was worse than understood at that time; now he is suspended with pay until the league figures out how to remove their collective heads from their collective asses.

[Aside: Replace the recently released police reports in this case with the “discovery” of the elevator video in the Ray Rice Affair and you will see a strikingly parallel set of events here.]

However, the telling thing to me about this matter is what it says about Greg Hardy. Reports now say he will move on to participate in MMA because he has had no offers from NFL teams. If those reports are true, how toxic must he be to the 32 folks who own NFL franchises? Hardy is a pass-rusher and a good one; he may not be the best one in the league, but on physical talent alone, he could probably start for at least half the clubs in the NFL. Pass-rushers are valued commodities. Nevertheless, no team wants him on the roster let alone on the field… I have two comments about that situation:

2. The fact that no team has made him an offer of employment – in the form of a tryout – smells like “collusion” to me. Yet, the NFLPA has been silent on that matter. I wonder if the NFLPA folks also have some insights that the public does not have …

Finally, since I discussed the “exporting” of American Football to London above, here is a comment from Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald regarding a niche sport in Europe:

“And finally: There is an actual sport in Europe called shin kicking. If this is your country’s national pastime, I’m thinking your country has some issues.”

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

NFL TV Ratings Are Down …

Just in case you live in a dark cave somewhere or have just emerged from a coma, the NFL’s TV ratings are down this year – and not insignificantly. Various folks have offered hypotheses to explain the data; these hypotheses are difficult to verify; therefore, a cacophony of views is out there offering “explanation”. I have no idea why this is the case, but I do have some observations to proffer:

2. I do not think reduced TV viewing is a response to the various allegations of violence against women involving NFL players. Let me be polite and just say that reasoning is a stretch.

3. I do not think reduced TV viewing is due to the violence of the game and the long-term health consequences incurred by the players. That too is a stretch.

4. I do not think reduced TV viewing has anything at all to do with the NFL’s crackdown on end-zone celebrations after a TD. That is a stretch even Reed Richards cannot make.

Some within the NFL have “suggested” that people may be distracted from football because of the intensive media coverage of the Presidential Campaigns. With regard to that explanation, I guess I could entertain it for a while because of the emotion that so many folks have poured into this election cycle; they may be more “emotionally drained” than they are “distracted”, but this could be a factor in the equation. The good part of this hypothesis is that it presents a rather clear way to test itself. Starting on Thursday November 10, the NFL will be televising games with the election cycle in the rear view mirror. If the election cycle is what is holding down ratings, they should start to climb back to their levels from last year between then and Christmas.

[Aside: If I were an NFL spokesthing, I would not be suggesting that there is more excitement and attention-grabbing value in political name-calling and poll analysis than there is in “my games”. There is a long-term negative message there.]

Personally, I think there are two factors internal to the NFL telecasts that are contributing factors to the decline in ratings:

2. The games are poorly officiated with some of the officiating errors – pointedly admitted 48 hours ex post facto – changing the outcome of the games themselves. Even more importantly, some of the errors change the outcome of the games with regard to the spread or the Total Line. The NFL has never even given a nod toward the “gambling factor” as a component of its growth but the fact is that a great deal of the NFL’s popularity rests on a bedrock foundation of wagering on various games and tuning in to watch how one’s side of the wager comes out.

Speaking of wagering and NFL football, the path to partial public funding for a stadium in Las Vegas to house the now-Oakland Raiders is clear. In a special session of the Nevada Legislature, an increase in the hotel tax was approved and the Governor signed the bill. There are 3 major hurdles here and one of them has been crossed. The two remaining hurdles are:

The other 31 NFL owners will have to “bless” the move to Las Vegas. Last year, they made Stan Kroenke cough up $500M for the right to move to LA; that put approximately $16M in each of the other owners’ pockets simply by voting “YES”. I can see a motivation for them to repeat that process again soon. There are some potential “nefarious conspiracy theories” out there regarding what some owners may demand in exchange for their “YES” votes. I will not dignify them here – until and unless there is some evidence that things other than monetary gain motivates some of the owners.

The NFL owners are meeting in Houston this week but they will not be voting on this move then. In fact, the league has already said that this issue may not make it to the agenda for the owners’ meeting in January 2017 but may need to wait until the Spring of 2017 before it is considered.

In one other NFL note, Dolphins’ rookie tackle Laremy Tunsil missed a game due to an injury he incurred getting out of the shower. You may recall that proximal to the NFL Draft a video appeared on one of the social media sites of Tunsil wearing and using a bong mask. So, that makes the question here obvious:

Was he using the bong mask in the shower?

To be fair, Tunsil claims that his social media account was hacked and that is how the video appeared there. Obviously, I have no idea if that is the case or not. But putting the video in juxtaposition with the “shower injury” is not all that difficult…

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

“Corpulent Chiefs coach Andy Reid, to reporters, on 346-pound nose tackle Dontari Poe’s 1-yard TD run vs. the Raiders: ‘I’m taking credit for that one for all the chubby guys out there.’”

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

Baseball Attendance

I read a report about the ongoing actions to keep the Tampa Bay Rays in St. Petersburg and/or to find them a new stadium site somewhere in that part of Florida. Underlying all of the various activities – and arm-waving to try to disguise the lack of any real activity – is a bleak set of stats:

In 2015, the Rays were also the worst draw in MLB and they drew even fewer fans in 2015 than they did in 2016.

The Rays have finished last in MLB in attendance for 5 consecutive seasons.

One might be tempted to conclude that the Rays did not contend this year or last year in any meaningful way and therefore attendance ebbed naturally. Well, when the Rays played away games this year, they played to crowds that averaged just under 30,000 fans; they were enough of a draw on the road to attract fans of other teams to head on out to the ballpark.

St. Petersburg is in Pinellas County in Florida. A group called Baseball Forever is seeking ways to keep the team in St. Petersburg near where it is currently located. Other entities/individuals have put forth ideas for 10 other locations in Pinellas County where a new stadium might be sited. Will any of these plans provide the Rays with a larger and more reliable fanbase? I have no idea, but the lack of businesses and population centers within a 30-minute drive of Tropicana Field is quite often cited as a basis for the poor attendance over the years.

The various groups who think they have the “right place” for a new stadium cite these figures:

Every other site mentioned in Pinellas County has more than 1,000,000 people living within a 30-minute drive of the proposed site.

I’m sorry, but that sort of argumentation leaves me cold. The Rays drew less than 16,000 fans per game last year. If 816,000 folks live within a 30-minute drive of the stadium, my interpretation is not that there are insufficient numbers of potential fans; my interpretation is that the people who live there are not baseball fans and would rather do something else with their time and discretionary expense money. Even if you assume that no one EVER drives more than 30 minutes to see a Rays’ game – clearly nonsensical – that means less than 2% of the “nearby folks” care enough to go see the games.

In the past, the Rays’ owners expressed an interest in having a downtown stadium in Tampa – which is not in Pinellas County. That suggestion/overture got some folks there looking into possibilities and that got a flurry of activity going on that side of Tampa Bay to include one suggestion to put a stadium out near Plant City which is along the Interstate east of Tampa. I have not heard or read anything about those sorts of activities/ideas for about a year now so maybe the “only game in town” is the “Pinellas County Lottery”. This is a situation that needs a solution…

Baseball attendance was basically flat this year; overall, MLB attendance was down 184 fans per game; total attendance in 2016 was 73,159,044. Seven teams drew more than 3 million fans for the season; the Red Sox almost did that drawing 2,955,434 which is a tad over 96% capacity at Fenway Park. Bad teams this year like the Braves and the Twins drew 700,000 more fans than did the Rays.

However, looking at the attendance figures for MLB this year, there were a couple of numbers that stood out:

The Orioles

The Tigers drew just under 2.5M fans (31.173 per game). They did not make the wild card slot bur were in contention for one of the slots until the final days of the season. Nevertheless, the Tigers’ attendance was DOWN an average of 2,483 per game. Say what?

The Nationals drew 2.48M fans (30,641 per game). The Nats ran away and hid in the NL East; it was pretty obvious they would be in the playoffs in early August. Nevertheless, Nats’ attendance was DOWN 1,703 fans per game. Oh, by the way, living in the DC area I know that all season long there were promotional games and series where fans could buy-one-get-one free ticket deals and other series where seats were available for $10. And attendance was DOWN?

The Washington Business Journal also took note of the attendance slump for the Nats in this article. Local business journals/publications are very good sources of data although they rarely if ever paint any sort of bleak picture in their reporting. So I found it interesting – because it was unusual – for the lead paragraph to be:

“The Washington Nationals might be back in the playoffs after a one-year absence, but the 95-win regular season wasn’t necessarily a winner at the gate.”

Finally, earlier this season, Dwight Perry took note of a foul ball that landed in a funnel cake deep fryer during a game at Minute Maid Park in Houston. Here was his comment in the Seattle Times:

“In other words, it was a deep fry ball to left.”

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

Origins Of On-Field “Jackassery”?

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

“Curmudgeonly rant: With penalties for taunting up 220 percent compared to the first four weeks of last season, the NFL is taking steps to clarify the rules of deportment for the benefit of the obstreperous players. So this is how far we’ve sunk. There was a time when the primary rule governing on-field conduct was an obvious and unwritten one: don’t act like a jackass. Those days are long gone.”

I agree completely that the meaning of and the limits imposed by that simple unwritten rule are long gone – and perhaps even long forgotten. So I sent this e-mail message to Professor Molinaro:

“When did NFL on-field ‘jackassery’ begin?

“Billy ‘White Shoes’ Johnson dancing in the end-zone?

“Harold Carmichael spiking the ball in the end-zone after a D catch?

“Mark Gastineau doing his sack dance’?

“I totally agree that it is getting out of hand but trying to define what is ‘excessive’ celebration and what is ‘taunting’ as opposed to ‘talking smack’ is a fool’s errand. Maybe that is a good thing because who better to set out on a fool’s errand than Roger Goodell and Dean Blandino and the rest of the suits in the NFL Front Office?”

I think the question as to the origins of excessive celebration is sufficiently interesting to pose it to the general audience here. My personal opinion is that Billy Johnson doing his end zone dance after returning a punt or a kickoff for a TD was the impetus for today’s ubiquitous end-zone celebrations. I think it was Mark Gastineau’s “sack dance” that set things on the course for “excessive celebration” because in many cases the sack that set the celebration in motion was not immediately impactful on the game. For example, he would celebrate a sack in the 4th quarter when the Jets were behind by 2 scores. Big deal…

I know others here will have cogent opinions/observations on this matter – – so have at it.

Having led off today with the issue of on-field jackassery, let me point to a recent NFL example of off-field jackassery. During the BYE Week prior to yesterday’s game in Detroit, the Eagles’ linebacker, Nigel Bradham, was arrested in Miami for carrying a loaded gun in his backpack in Miami airport. Earlier this year, Bradham was also arrested in South Florida for allegedly punching a hotel employee; his trial for assault and battery in that case is scheduled for January 2017.The Eagles’ defensive coordinator, Jim Schwartz, had coached Bradham in other stops in the NFL and had recommended that the Eagles bring Bradham to the team. However, Schwartz did get right down to the heart of this matter with this comment:

“You do enough dumb-ass things, pretty soon, you’re going to be labeled a dumb ass.”

I think coach Schwartz’ comment there has myriad application and it explains many of my sentiments with regard to people and institutions. For example, that explains pretty much the way I feel about the folks at the NCAA who write the silly eligibility rules and then enforce them stupidly. That pretty much explains how and why I think so poorly of the 535 members of the US Congress. I think this may be an important “principle” that will need invocation in the future and so I will declare that statement to be:

The Schwartz Conjecture.

Profootballtalk.com reported last week that Johnny Manziel has now served his 4-game suspension and can therefore be signed by any NFL team and put on the field next Sunday should that team choose to do something that dumb. Somehow, the fact that Manziel was not under contract to any team in the league had nothing to do with starting the clock on his 4-game suspension. In fact, his “suspension” coincided with a stretch of 4 NFL games where no team wanted him to play in the first place. Not a lot of “deterrent value” in that there punishment, I would say…

Roger Goodell could suspend me for 4 games just the way Manziel was suspended for 4 games and the effect on me and the NFL would be exactly the same. Neither of us would care; none of you would care.

The Atlanta Falcons will have to give up 3 days of Organized Team Activities (OTAs) in 2017 because the team violated the work rules spelled out in the current CBA between the NFL and the NFLPA. According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, the Falcons let players “engage in excessive levels of on-field physical contact” back in May 2016. This provision of the rules was put there with the idea of promoting player safety in practice settings. You can read the rest of the account of this matter here.

Finally, since I began today talking about on-field jackassery and excessive celebrations, let me close with this comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald on that subject:

“The NFL is cracking down on touchdown celebrations. I think it was the guy who did the 11-minute naked Lambada atop the goal post crossbar that pushed the commissioner over the edge.”

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

Deja Vu Philly 76ers …

I think we have been here before; I think we know how this story plays out. The Philadelphia 76ers had the first overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft and they took Ben Simmons. Now, just as NBA teams were getting set for training camps and exhibition games, Ben Simmons suffered a broken foot; he has undergone surgery on that foot; he will be out for a TBD length of time. The Sixers say they will not “hurry” him back; Simmons’ agent hinted that he might advise Simmons to sit out the entire season.

Let me do a quick review here of the Sixers “prime” acquisitions” in recent off-seasons:

In 2012

In 2013, the Sixers traded to get Nerlens Noel on Draft Night. Noel had torn his ACL during his only year at Kentucky. He did not play at all in his first year in the NBA as he rehabbed from that knee surgery.

In 2013, the Sixers drafted Michael Carter-Williams with their own pick in the draft. Williams won Rookie of the Year – – and then needed shoulder surgery. Halfway through his second season, the Sixers traded him to Milwaukee in a multi-team deal where they essentially got a future draft pick.

In 2014, the Sixers selected Joel Embiid near the top of the NBA Draft. Embiid suffered a stress fracture in his back while at Kansas and then prior to the draft he broke a bone in his foot. That surgery and rehab kept him out all of what would have been his rookie year. That surgery required a second operation and he also missed all of what would have been his second NBA season.

In 2015, the Sixers took Jahlil Okafor near the top of the NBA Draft. Okafor managed to start the season with the Sixers and played a little over half the season before he suffered a partial tear of the meniscus in his knee.

And now, Ben Simmons …

You know, if we did not have the Affordable Care Act on the books, I think health insurance companies might look at players acquired by the Sixers in the off-season and declare that acquisition to be a “pre-existing condition” as a means to increase the premiums for the player’s insurance coverage …

Last week during the run-up to the Bills/Pats game, there was speculation that the Pats might have to play Julian Edelman at QB. Edelman had been a QB in college at Kent State but let me just say that his quarterbacking experience at the NFL level was “meager”. Bob Molinaro had this item in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot last week as a way to remind folks that this sort of thing had happened before in NFL history:

“Back in the day: For some of us of a certain age, speculation that receiver Julian Edelman could fill in at quarterback for the Patriots on Sunday recalls the time that Don Shula’s Baltimore Colts, having lost quarterbacks Johnny Unitas and Gary Cuozzo to injury late in the 1965 season, turned to running back Tom Matte. Wearing the NFL’s first play-calling wristband, Matte quarterbacked the Colts to victory over the Rams before Baltimore suffered a playoff loss in overtime to the Packers. Matte’s wristband is displayed in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.”

Like Edelman, Matte had played QB in college at Ohio State but he was a runner and not a thrower. Matte led the Colts to a win over the LA Rams in his first game and then lost in overtime to the Packers in the playoff game that followed that one.

According to this report in the Chicago Business Journal, World Series Fever seems to have reached epidemic proportion in Chicago. The report says that TicketCity – a reseller of event tickets – had the median price for Game 1 of the World Series Game at Wrigley Field at $3900. The median prices for Game 2 and Game 3 were $3800 and $3600 respectively.

If the oddsmakers are to be believed, some of the good folks in Chicago will actually get to shell out that kind of money to see the Cubbies play in the World Series. In addition to bucking the trend of not having won the Series since 1908, the Cubs also need to recognize that only 1 team since 2000 has won the World Series after winning 100 or more games in the regular season – as the Cubs did this year. Nonetheless, here are the odds to win – not just participate in but to win – the World Series as of now:

I think a Cubs/Red Sox World Series would be fun to watch given the potential for offensive fireworks from both teams.

The playoffs got off to a rousing start last night with an 11-inning game in Toronto where the Blue Jays managed to advance to the next level of the playoffs beating the Orioles 5-2 on a monstrous HR by Edwin Encarnation in the bottom of the 11th inning.

Tonight’s game between the Mets and the Giants portrays itself as a battle of pitching titans. Noah Syndergaard takes the mound for the Mets; he and Madison Bumgarner go at it in this game for the honor of playing the Cubs in the NLDS.

The stats that surprise me for this playoff team are these three taken in juxtaposition:

Finally, here is some data and commentary about another set of baseball stats from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times:

“Home runs in Major League Baseball, according to ESPN.com, are up 13.8 percent from 2015 and up 33 percent over 2014.

“What, are they dipping the balls in flaxseed oil or something?”

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

Two Sports Gambling Issues

I must start today with a tip of the hat to Broderick Crawford and his catch phrase on the old TV show, Highway Patrol.

Since yesterday’s rant focused on my position that this is the time to legalize and regulate sports gambling, I want to present two issues here that tangentially related to that. In the past week or so, the IOC found it necessary to channel the words of Baron Pierre de Coubertin – the man who resurrected the Olympic Games – with regard to three boxers from the recent games in Rio. The good Baron once said:

“The day when a sportsman stops thinking above all else of the happiness in his own effort and the intoxication of the power and physical balance he derives from it, the day when he lets considerations of vanity or interest take over, on this day his ideal will die.”

It seems that these three boxers – two Irishmen and one from Great Britain – stopped thinking of the happiness in their own efforts long enough to wager on some of the boxing events that were ongoing. I read the reports here as carefully as I could, but I did not see any indication that the IOC thought that they had bet on the matches that they participated in.

Here are the punishments handed down:

[Aside: If “severe reprimands” were worth more than unit of unicorn upchuck, there would be no crime problems in the world.]

Each boxer – should he be eligible to compete in future Games and should he qualify – will have to show that he followed an educational program established by the IOC. [Translation: They have to take a training course.] The way the IOC thinks about this is that they must actively participate in the educational programs established by the IOC, the Olympic Organizing Committee in either Ireland or the UK and the AIBA which is the international federation that oversees amateur boxing competitions.

The Olympic Committees in Ireland and in the UK were also reprimanded for failing to inform their athletes about the content of all the IOC rules that might apply to them. [Aside: Unless that means those Committees get a smaller share of the various bribes that flow through the Olympic Movement, I doubt that will “leave a mark” on any of those folks.] Moreover, they are directed to do a better job at this sort of “informing” in future Olympiads. [Wow! I bet that stings. Oops, Am I allowed to make a gambling reference here?]

The AIBA does not receive a reprimand here but the IOC puts it on notice that the IOC expects the AIBA to make sure that its regulations for its competitions are congruent with the regulations contained in the Olympic Code. The AIBA is to set up its own education programs and is to inform the IOC of the content of those programs to assure congruency with the Olympic Code.

I know nothing about these 3 boxers other than what is above. If Rio was the end of their amateur boxing career, I doubt that any of the stuff summarized above means anything at all to them. If any of them are turning pro, none of that means anything to them. All of this is great theater and allows the IOC to appear to be on a moral high ground – a place they occupy about as frequently as the Chicago Cubs win the World Series.

If – based on the example above – you have the idea that the “gambling related” items for today are only of marginal importance, you will be happy to know that the second one is about as important as the first one. According to a report last week in the Dayton Business Journal, lawyers representing Pete Rose have sent a letter to the Baseball Hall of Fame asking the Hall of Fame to reconsider Rose’s eligibility for inclusion there.

This issue is a sports version of Whack-A-Mole. As soon as it is bludgeoned out of sight in one venue, it pops up in another. It seems that the basis for this letter for eligibility reconsideration stems from the reconsideration that Commissioner Rob Manfred conducted about a year ago where he chose not to reinstate Rose into baseball. The lawyers have seized upon this statement from Rob Manfred with regard to Hall of Fame eligibility:

“It is not part of my authority of responsibility here to make any determination concerning Mr. Rose’s eligibility as a candidate for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In fact, in my view, the considerations that should drive a decision on whether an individual should be allowed to work in baseball are not the same as those that should drive a decision on Hall of Fame eligibility. … Thus, any debate over Mr. Rose’s eligibility for the Hall of Fame is one that must take place in a different forum.”

My position on this issue has been for the last 25 years that Pete Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame for what he did on the field during his career. If in the modern day incarnation of the Hall of Fame there need be societal norms attached to one’s candidacy, then my solution would be to put two narrative plaques beneath the busts of the players in the Hall:

Plaque #1

Plaque #2 would explain to the visitor how/why this person fell short of a societal norm or ran afoul of a baseball rule.

Note please that my solution to the presence of societal norms today would ease the debates about players from the Steroid Era getting into the Hall of Fame. It would – unfortunately – also require that “second plaques” be added to the busts of more than a few of the older members of the Hall of Fame whose behaviors then would surely offend lots of folks today and people who are offended today would engage in a Twitter jihad to make that person’s candidacy a cause celebre.

If we were to move to a social stature where betting on sporting events was not stigmatized, we could avoid both of the sorts of situations that I have described above. That would make the world a better place – which is sort of what Baron Pierre de Coubertin obviously hoped to do by resuscitating the Olympic Games.

Finally, here is a comment regarding the Rio Olympics that I found in Brad Rock’s column, Rock On, in the Deseret News recently:

“Late night host Conan O’Brien: ‘It’s been reported that after winning three gold medals in Rio, Usain Bolt was caught cheating on his girlfriend. More impressive, he was also found with another woman just 14 seconds later.’”

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