Category: Daily Rants

As I continue my quest to ignore any focus at all on the upcoming Falcons/Patriots game 10 days hence, there are indeed issues worthy of commentary.  For example, Brent Musburger announced yesterday that he will be retiring – at age 77 – from ESPN/ABC Sports at the end of January this year.  His last on-air game will be Georgia versus Kentucky at Rupp Arena on 31 January.  I remember Musburger from his days as the studio host for NFL Today on CBS back in the 70s and I have always enjoyed his game calls.  Here is a sentence from the AP report on his retirement:

“Musburger, who is 77, said he’s leaving active sportscasting to help his family get a sports handicapping business started and to use some of the millions of airline miles he’s earned for some fun travel.”

As you can probably surmise, I fully get why he would choose to retire.  I think “fun travel” is a great idea at any age and would only chide Messr. Musburger for not doing a lot of that all along the way; no reason to put it off until you are 77.  I can also relate to the idea of helping family members to start a sports handicapping company.  If the various states prevail in court to overturn PASPA and are allowed to host sports betting in places like New Jersey and Michigan and New York, there will be a growing market for “sports consultants” and this company may indeed be getting on the ground floor.

Bonne chance, Brent Musburger…

Speaking obliquely about wagering on sporting matters, one of the Internet sportsbooks has posted odds on where Tony Romo will play in the 2017 NFL season.  As of this morning, here is a sampling of the odds:

• Houston Texans  3 to 1  (the lowest odds on the board)
• Denver Broncos  4.75 to 1
• Buffalo Bills  5 to 1
• NY Jets  7.5 to 1
• Dallas Cowboys  10 to 1
• “Retired”  20 to 1.

If Romo winds up playing somewhere other than Dallas next year, it will have to involve at least one of these circumstances:

1. The Cowboys release him; Romo becomes a free agent and signs on in the place that most appeals to him.
2. The Cowboys trade Romo to a team with a ton of cap room this year – and for the next several years.

Absent one or both of those situations, the ‘new team” must fit Romo’s contract into their salary cap structure and it may not be easy.  Romo has 3 years left on a 6-year/$108M restructuring of his contract and the three late years are back-loaded.  If my calculations are correct, he will earn $72M in the next 3 years.

Something to keep in mind here is that the Cowboys can – if they want – keep Romo as their backup QB even at his sky-high price for the simple reason that they are paying Dak Prescott on a slotted rookie contract which means that their “total cap commitment” to the QB position is about what it would be with Romo as the starter and Prescott as the clipboard holder.  If my reading of Prescott’s contract situation is correct, he got a $400K signing bonus last year and then made $450K for the 2016 season.  This year, his base salary goes up to $540K and then increases by $90K each year until the 2019 season whereupon he can be a free agent.

There is still a lot of time and opportunity to speculate on what the Cowboys will do here and what other teams may try to do to pry Romo loose from Dallas etc.  In the end, this all comes down to money – cap money for the team and cash money in Tony Romo’s bank account.

Now, speaking of money in amounts that I have difficulty relating to as I peruse my bank accounts, I read a report saying that the NFL is going to extort $650M from the Chargers’ owners as a relocation fee.  That means that the Chargers will pay $650M to move the team to a town that does not want them very much and to become second-level tenants in a new stadium playpen being built by the owner of the other team that just moved to LA.  So, riddle me this:

 

If the Chargers’ owners have $650M laying around – or have access to $650M without moving Heaven and Earth – why can’t they take that money and get some money from the NFL’s “slush funds” and perhaps take on a partner who would buy in for say 15% of the team and pool all of that money?

 

My guess is that total would be north of $1B and that would allow the Chargers to build – and own – their own new stadium in San Diego where fans have supported the team for more than 50 years.

The fact that this makes sense to me and seems not to make any sense to the Chargers’ owners and/or the NFL financial mavens tells you why I never would have had a shot at making it in the world of high finance…

Finally, since I started today with a comment about a retirement, let me close with this item from Brad Rock in the Deseret News:

“A 75-year-old man reportedly punched a 92-year-old man in the face over seating in a Nebraska nursing home cafeteria.

“So that settles it. Neither Evander Holyfield nor George Foreman has retired.”

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

 

 

You may not have noticed it, but the NBA season is about half over.  It is still a bit early to get focused on the NBA; the really interesting stuff starts to happen after the NBA All-Star Game and the league gets down to business about the fourth week in March.  Nonetheless, here are 9 teams who have been surprises in the first half of this season.

1. Brooklyn Nets (9-35):  Most folks thought the Nets would be bad but not this bad.  They are on pace to win only 16.8 games this year.  Ugly indeed …
2. Chicago Bulls (22-23):  They are in 8^th place in the Eastern Conference for now but they are underachieving what most folks thought they would be doing in the first half of this season.  The Bulls are a poor shooting team – except for Jimmy Butler – and good defense will only get you so far in today’s NBA.
3. Dallas Mavericks (15-29):  The horrible surprise for the Mavs was starting off the season losing 13 of their first 15 games.
4. Houston Rockets (34-14):  I do not know anyone who thought the Rockets would be on pace to win 58 games in late January.  Other than merely paying lip-service to playing defense, James Harden is doing everything else in the world for this team – and doing all of that very well.
5. LA Lakers (16-32):  The surprise here is that the Lakers began the season very hot and people were suggesting a possible appearance in the playoffs this year.  Then reality struck and the Lakers are doing now what most folks thought they would do from the season’s opening tip-off.
6. Miami Heat (15-30):  When Dwayne Wade left in free agency, it was clear that the Heat would have a down year.  I did not think they would be a team to win fewer than 30 games this year – but they are on pace to do just that.
7. Milwaukee Bucks (21-23):  Here is a positive surprise team and I think you can point to the emergence of Jabari Parker and Gianis Antetokounmpo – or his more easily spelled persona, The Greek Freak.
8. NY Knicks (20-26):  Things were looking up for the Knicks in November and then it all started to fall apart.  Now there is infighting amongst the team and the GM; they refuse to play any defense; most of their outside shooting is awful and the thing they do best is to lose games.
9. Philly 76ers (15-27):  Trust the process…  A healthy Joel Embiid and the arrival of Dario Saric has made this team significantly better than it has been for the last 5 years and they have yet to get any contribution from Ben Simmons – their top pick in the draft last year.

I am not any sort of expert when it comes to putting out a sports section in a daily newspaper.  Nonetheless, I think I can spot an article that is – at its core – a space filler on a slow news day.  In radio and TV, they say there is nothing worse than “dead air” and I suspect that in the newspaper industry, there is nothing worse than blank newsprint on the page.  That brings me to an article that appeared in the Las Vegas Review-Journal about a week ago, which offered readers 5 “tips” to help them keep their New Year’s Fitness Resolutions.  Of course, the best way would be not to make such resolutions in the first place but let us ignore the obvious solution to this “problem”.  I am going to list the 5 “tips” offered in this article and make a brief comment about each of the “tips”:

1. Set more manageable goals.  Setting easily manageable fitness goals probably contributed significantly to the fact that you thought it necessary to make a bunch of New Year’s fitness resolutions a couple of weeks ago.
2. Do something fun:  Generally that will mean doing something that has little to do with whatever your fitness resolutions had to do with.  Here are some things that are fun – playing poker, eating some pizza and downing it with a brewski, finishing the New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle.  None of that will get you fit…
3. Be consistent.  Like #1 above, this is likely one of the behavior characteristics that got you to the point that you felt it necessary to make fitness resolutions.  People who consistently eat more than they need and do not work out tend to be in poor shape.  Ever notice that?
4. Have someone keep you accountable.  Thank hard about this one because this is going to be someone that you ditch as a friend.  If you need help keeping your Fitness Resolutions, the last thing you need to add to the mix here is a friend who is acting like a self-righteous harpy all the time.
5. Incentivize it.  Oh good; I can have those Boston Cream donuts now that I did my time on the treadmill…  That’ll help.

Let me veer even further off the path of sports today to acknowledge the end of a 146-year run by Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.  My wife and I and several neighbors go to see the show each Spring when its itinerary brings it to the DC suburbs and we all have a wonderful time every year that we go.  After this year, my wife, my neighbors and I  will all have to settle for the clowns in the Congress and in the Administration to provide us with the pratfalls and goof-ups that give us amusement.  There are indeed plenty of clowns in this town – – even when the circus is elsewhere.

Finally, with Sean McVay hired as the Rams’ coach at age 30, is it possible that Bill Belichick has a hoodie that is older than Sean McVay?  Enquiring minds want to know…

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

 

 

Anyone who has read these rants over the years knows that I am a fan and admirer of Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle.  In my fantasy world, I like to think that I can produce prose half the caliber of what he must have to delete from his columns just to meet the space restrictions of his newspaper. Two days ago, he married the social concept of “fake news” to the sports world in an extraordinarily interesting way.  It begins with the heading:

“All the fake news that fits, we print …”

From there, the column is wide-ranging but under the “reporting” that the recently inaugurated President had issued an executive order banning the use of helmets in NFL games, here is a sample of the commentary:

“The President said he cleared the no-helmet order with his newly appointed head of OSHA, Evel Knievel.

“When a reporter at the news conference told Trump that Knievel was dead, the president retorted, ‘That’s what they said about Donald Trump last September.’”

I highly recommend that you read this column in its entirety simply because it is far too good for me to try to summarize here.

While I am meandering dangerously close to politics here – only for a moment to be sure – I ran across a report at espn.com that said President Trump had received some advice from Johnny Manziel.  You read that correctly; Johnny Football thought that he had some good advice for the President of the United States that had nothing to do with domestic policy or foreign policy or whatever.  Here is the deal:

• Johnny Manziel has deleted his Twitter account.
• Just before he did that, here is what he Tweeted out:

“Yo, POTUS even I know to stay away from the notifications section on twitter. S— will drive you crazy, lead the country and let them hate … Control what you can control and let the rest fall by the wayside.”

Please put your politics aside here for just a moment and contemplate the zeitgeist of 2017 wherein a presumably recovering addict offers advice to the newly inaugurated President of the United States that makes actual good sense.  Timothy Leary was not in a position to make a similar recommendation to President Kennedy; David Koresh was not in a position to make a similar recommendation to President Clinton; Anwar Al-Awlaki was not in a position to make a similar recommendation to President Obama.  Notwithstanding all the negative precedents, Johnny Manziel may indeed have a piece of advice for the President of the United States that might be worthy of attention.

I cannot decide if this falls into the category of:

1. The Blind leading The Blind – – or – –
2. Out of the mouths of babes …

As the NFL builds up/winds down to a single game two weeks hence, the college basket all season has begun its buildup to March Madness.  Teams are focused into “Conference Competition”; the joy-ride/feelgood tournaments of late December are forgotten; the patsy games/glorified scrimmage games are in the rear-view mirror.  I can watch college basketball in December to see really good teams and really good players dominate my TV screen.  From here on out, I can watch with the idea that I may be able to discern just how good this team is as compared to that team and how good that player really is when he is being defended by a team of comparable talent.  There is still a LONG way to go between late January and March Madness but I would like to offer a few general college basketball observations here for you to chew upon:

1. It sure is fun to watch UCLA basketball this year.  This team may not be as dominant as some of the UCLA teams led by Lew Alcindor and/or Bill Walton35 -40 years ago, but they are very good and they are a whole lot of “entertaining” to watch.
2. The Big 12 may be an “afterthought” in terms of major college football, but the Big 12 is a powerhouse conference in basketball this year.  Kansas and Baylor are both 18-1 this year; West Virginia and K-State are merely 15-4 this year.  These are four very serious teams and that means there will be some major confrontations in conference play in the Big 12.
3. The Big East has no schools that are football powers but that does not mean you can ignore Big East basketball.  The defending NCAA Champion, Villanova, is 19-1 this year; in the same conference, you have Creighton at 18-2, Butler at 17-3, and Xavier at 14-5.

Please notice that I have not mentioned anyone in the ACC and/or the SEC and/or the Big 10 above.  That does not mean that I doubt that those conferences have good teams; what it means is that you can see good team play in a lot of different conferences this year and what you have to do as a viewer is to avoid overloading on “games of mediocrity”.  Too many local cable systems – Northern Virginia is a prime offender here – offer tons of game that showcase teams that would be better served if no one other than the student body of that school and the blood relatives of the team members every looked in.

Finally, since I referred you to a Scott Ostler column in the SF Chronicle above, here is another of his comments.  He was “enumerating” the things he might prefer to watch other than Thursday Night Football:

“My entire backlog of ‘Jeopardy! — the Art Fleming years.’ ”

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

 

 

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………