Category: Daily Rants

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

The weather outside Curmudgeon Central today is dreary at best – low clouds, drizzle, temperature in the mid-30s.  I probably won’t see the sun for the next 48 hours.  This is curmudgeonly weather and perhaps it is an omen for what I will get to kvetch about in 2017.  However, before I get into my grumbling groove for the year, I have two bits of uplifting news to share.  It is as if there are two little rays of sunshine beaming through the cloud cover here …

1. Gene Collier published the 33^rd annual Trite Trophy column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  As always it is clever and entertaining.  I would have preferred that the “Third Runner-Up” for this year’s award as the winner but that is unimportant.  I commend this column to your reading; here is your link.
2. Last week, I told you that the powers that be at the Seattle Times had canceled Dwight Perry’s column Sideline Chatter as part of a cost-cutting/reorganization out there.  The final column was supposed to run on Jan 1, 2017.  Then I got news that Sideline Chatter had gotten a reprieve from the editors there.  Instead of running several times a week, it will only run on Sunday and the commitment to keeping it alive and kicking is only for a couple of months to see how things shake out.

As you probably suspected, I wrote to several of the folks at the Seattle Times lamenting their decision to sacrifice Sideline Chatter at the altar of newsroom reorganization.  If I were prone to using the false logic of post hoc propter hoc – which I am not – I would be hinting very strongly here that I was somehow responsible for the “stay of execution” here.  That is abject nonsense of course; what happened is that the folks who are in charge of putting out the paper there recognized that Sideline Chatter attracts readers to the paper and/or to the paper’s website.  Nonetheless, I can start 2017 knowing that there will be Dwight Perry columns for me to read – at least for the next month or two.

Now back to the gloominess that today’s weather suggests ought to be the tone for the day.  It is Black Monday – not to be confused with Black Friday, Sgt. Joe Friday or former Brooklyn Dodgers’ pitcher Joe Black – and that means a bunch of NFL coaches are no longer employed as they had been for the past season.  Three teams – the Rams, Jags and Bills – jumped the gun here and fired their incumbent coaches during the season.  Add to the list of teams that will be looking for new leadership next year the Broncos (Gary Kubiak is retiring for health reasons), the Niners and the Chargers.  Those are the known job openings as of this morning meaning almost 20% of the NFL teams will be “under new management” very soon.

Before getting to the rumors about who might get hired and where, let me suggest that there may be some other openings over the course of this week.

• The Colts have now – and have had for several years – the key ingredient for a successful NFL team.  They have a solid franchise QB.  Moreover, they play in a division that is not fearsome by any means.  Nevertheless, they have not been able to put together a solid winning team because their OL and the DL and their DBs are sub-standard.  Is that bad coaching?  Is that incompetent roster-building?  Is that both…?
• The Texans – in the same division with the Colts – spent a lot of money to sign a “franchise QB” last off-season and he stunk out the joint so badly that he was benched before the season began.  Might that coaching decision have polluted the waters there when it comes to the GM/Head Coach relationship?
• The Jets were awful this year and the problem is the aging roster.  They have studs on defense who have gotten long in the tooth; they have not much more than journeymen on offense.  Will the coach take the fall for that situation?
• The Bengals finished 6-9-1 after 6 straight years in the playoffs.  Marvin Lewis took over a franchise of futility and turned it into a respectable franchise.  But the NFL is a league dominated by “what have you done for me recently?”
• The Bears finished the year at 3-13; anytime a team does that and the coach has been there for more than a cup of coffee, you have to wonder about that coach’s longevity.  I think the Bears would be nuts to fire John Fox, but who do you know that can read the minds of the folks who own the Bears?
• The Panthers fell from 15-1 in 2015 to 6-10 in 2016.  That probably will not get Ron Rivera fired, but I’ll bet it puts him on a shorter leash than he enjoyed as of September, 2016.

In my opinion, the best jobs out there – purely from a football perspective – are the Chargers and the Broncos.  The Chargers have been hit by injuries for each of the last 2 seasons but they have a franchise QB and they have a solid RB and they have at least one very good WR.  The Broncos have an outstanding defense so the “restructuring work” only needs doing on one side of the ball.

In my opinion, the worst job out there is the Bills.  They have 3 QBs on the roster and none of them are any good; they have a very good RB who is getting very near the expiration date for most NFL RBs; they have a middling defense (19^th in the NFL) that allows opponents to run the ball and control the clock (29^th in the NFL in rushing yards allowed per game).  Added to those “football issues”, the fact is that Buffalo NY is not a magnet for top-shelf free agents.  For example, I believe the top tax bracket for NY State Income Tax is 8.8% …

I will be interested to see how many of the new coaching hires – and the interviewees who get serious consideration for jobs this year – will be “retread coaches” as compared to “up-and-coming hot commodities”.  Please note that of the 5 coaches fired during the season and at the end of yesterday’s action, 3 were retreads (Chip Kelly, Rex Ryan and Jeff Fisher) and 2 were “up-and-coming hot commodities” (Gus Bradley and Mike McCoy).

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

“DeVry University has agreed to pay $100 million over FTC claims that its ads misled prospective students.

“Especially the part about winning last year’s Rose Bowl.”

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

 

 

About a week ago, I mentioned that Leicester City had won the English Premier League last year but was down in the table near the “relegation zone” at the halfway mark of this year’s season.  A reader wondered in a comment to that rant if a Premier League Champion had ever been relegated the next year.  I said that was something I would need time to check and would not get that sort of time until after the Holidays.  I was wrong.  At a Holiday Gathering last week, I met a man who was born and raised in England who has been in the US for more than 25 years and is now a US citizen; his upbringing has led him to be a devoted follower of English Football and not American Football.  So, I asked him the question about a champion being relegated the next year…

The answer to the very specific question is no; that has never happened in the Premier League which has only been in existence since 1992.  However, he said that before 1992, the top level of English Football was the First Division and there was a First Division champion that was relegated after the next season.  The team suffering that fate was Manchester City; my informant recalled that the year was in the “mid-1930s”; I have subsequently confirmed that Manchester City was the First Division champion for the 1936/37 season and then finished in the “bottom 3” and was sent down after the 1937/38 season.

So, now we know …

I took the occasion of this conversation with my newfound soccer maven to ask the obverse question.  I said that I suspected it was not nearly so rare for a team relegated in one year to finish atop the league below and be promoted after the following season.  He said that happens regularly “to the point where I pay it no mind”.

So, now we know the obverse too …

Back in the time when the Cubs and the Indians were playing in the World Series, lots of folks adopted the mantra that the fans of both teams were loyal and long-suffering fans due to the long time between championships for either team.  As I read those sorts of reports and heard that line of commentary, I formed an image in my mind that equated the fans in Chicago and the fans in Cleveland in terms of their ardor for their teams and their levels of frustration.

There are data, however, that suggest that is not the case.

• In 2016, the Cubs drew 39,906 fans per game.  That is 96.7% of capacity.
• In 2016, the Indians drew 19,650 fans per game.  That is 55.8% of capacity.

Moreover, the percent of capacity figure for the Indians is “inflated somewhat” by the fact that the field has been lowering seating capacity each year since 2008 when there were about 8300 more seats in the stadium than there are today.  In terms of average attendance per game for 2016, the Indians were 28^th in MLB and this was a year when the team was in contention from the start of the season all the way to the 7^th game of the World Series.  Only two teams in MLB had a lower average attendance:

1. Oakland A’s drew about 900 fewer fans per game than the Indians.  The A’s were never in contention and the A’s play in a stadium about as appealing as a dumpster.
2. Tampa Bay Rays drew about 3800 fewer fans per game than the Indians.  The Rays were never serious contenders in 2016 and the Rays almost always have the worst attendance in MLB.

If in any way “fan passion” and “fan loyalty” are reflected in ticket buying and game attendance, it would seem to me that the fans in Cleveland have gotten a lot of credit that they may not deserve…

I don’t know about you, but my cable TV provider gives me access to at least 100 – if not 200 – channels that I never watch and am never tempted to watch.  Generally, I do not stand up and cheer when I hear about the birth of a new channel or its delivery by my cable provider.  Then there is the case where I hear about a new channel that just makes me shake my head in wonderment…

The IOC, the USOC and NBC Universal have formed some sort of holy alliance to bring to life the “Olympic Channel; Home of Team USA”.  This entity will come to exist in 2017 and will provide “year-round Olympic-sport programming” from all over the world with the emphasis being on US athletes and teams.  This is an adjunct to something called the “Olympic Channel” which evidently exists out there in TV land – or perhaps in a galaxy far away.

Most of the folks I know do not follow many – if any – Olympic sports for the first three years after the closing ceremonies of an Olympic Games.  If you asked a random person on the street today about luge competitions or Greco-Roman wrestling or synchronized diving, my guess is that you would observe a lot of blank stares.  My guess is that with the launch of “Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA” that situation will change not at all.

If this channel is going to be on the air 168 hours a week every week for all the time between the times of marginal interest in most Olympic sports, one of two things has to happen:

1. There will be a whole lot of repeat programming for various competitions…
2. There will be created a whole lot of features getting “up close and personal” with athletes and coaches in obscure sports all of which will contain stories of the trials, struggles and challenges facing those athletes and coaches.  Then those feature stories will be repeated over and over and over too…

Finally, instead of trying to end this rant on a light note as I usually try to do, I need to end this one on a downer.  I have learned that Dwight Perry’s column, Sideline Chatter, will be canceled by the Seattle Times as of January 1, 2017.  Evidently, the impetus behind this decision is cost-cutting at the paper.  Since I often use items from Sideline Chatter here, I will miss the column because it was a fertile ground for material.  On a more general level, I will miss it because it is a genre that is not commonly found in sports sections around the country these days; there used to be a bunch of so-called “notes columns” but many have fallen by the wayside.

I want to say thank you and good fortune to Dwight Perry for all his columns – his last one will be the 3,704^th Sideline Chatter.  I believe that Dwight Perry will continue to be the night editor who puts the sports section together for the Seattle Times.  If anyone here wants to say thank you to Dwight Perry, his e-mail address can be found at the bottom of each Sideline Chatter column.

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

 

 

I am going to take the opportunity of an uncertain writing schedule for the next week or ten days to clean two items off my clipboard that have been gathering dust.  Normally springtime is the region of the calendar for such tidying up but these things will not survive until then.  So, here goes…

The NCAA has sent a “notice of allegations” to Rutgers University indicating that the NCAA believes the Rutgers football program committed 7 violations of the NCAA rules in the last five years.  One allegation is that an assistant coach committed an academic violation pointedly aimed at keeping a player eligible and that another coach had some improper recruiting contacts and that there may have been some hanky-panky going on between recruits and “football hostesses”.  It is all rather run-of-the-mill stuff and the allegations all focus on events under the previous head coach and coaching staff.  You can read the report about all this here.

I can imagine that many of you are wondering why this is even marginally interesting.  Think about it for a moment.  Rutgers football was – allegedly – skirting the rules in recruiting and in maintaining eligibility for players who went onto the football field this year and soiled themselves on a fairly regular basis.  Those guys could not even cheat effectively.  Last season, Rutgers was 2-10 and for the season, this was the composite score:

 

Opponents  450  Rutgers  178

 

Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald had this comment related to Rutgers football recently:

“At halftime of the Big Ten championship game, two students competed to see who could throw the most footballs through a giant Dr. Pepper can. This is also how Rutgers made it into the conference.”

The latest brouhaha regarding the NBA came about a week ago, when the Cavaliers went to play the Grizzlies in Memphis for the only time this season.  People in the area bought tickets to see the Cavs and specifically to see LeBron James; after all, fans of the Grizzlies do not get to see a player of that ability on a routine basis.  The problem is that the Cavs decided to give some players a day off on the occasion of that game in Memphis.  The Cavs did not even bring LeBron James or Kyrie Irving or Kevin Love to Memphis.  Fans who paid “premium game prices” for tix did not even get to see those guys sitting in street clothes in the bench area.  The fans sort of felt like they had been “baited and switched”.  Truth be told, they were…

However, the anger seemed to be directed at LeBron James for this fan unhappiness.  LeBron is 31 years old and since the Cavs’ objective for this year is to defend their NBA Championship, it is reasonable that he will get some time off during the season.  His real work does not even begin until late April 2017.  He is not the perpetrator of the “bait and switch” since he did not suggest to the Grizzlies that they put the premium price tag on the tix for that game nor does he have any obligation to the folks who own or run the Grizzlies.

More than a few commentators have said that the NBA “needs to do something about this”.  I heard exactly no suggested “somethings to be done” that were enforceable or even particularly practical.  Personally, I think the problem is rooted – as is generally the case – in money.  The NBA plays an 82-game regular season schedule and most players need time off during the season for some “mini-R&R time”.  If the regular season were shorter, most of those players would not need the time off and there would be less complaining about scheduling that involved back-to-back games.  However, this is the point where money enters the arena.  If the NBA were to cut the regular season to – let me pick a number and say 58 games, home-and-home with every other team in the league – there are 2 certainties:

1. Revenue would go down.
2. The owners would not do that willingly and the players would not like the reduced salary cap.

So, there you have it.  This is a “problem” that is not going to go away.  So, the next time it happens, can we please not revisit the same discussions we had this time?  This is a financial/economic issue and it will not be resolved based on a new rule from the NBA Front Office with or without the concurrence of the NBPA.

Since the Cavs also left Kevin Love at home for that game in Memphis, let me include this comment about Kevin Love from Brad Rock in the Deseret News:

“Being nephew of the Beach Boys’ Mike Love has its advantages, but it doesn’t necessarily extend to musical skills.

“Cleveland forward Kevin Love says he went through a teen phase when he hounded his parents into buying him a guitar for Christmas.

“’It’s safe to say that didn’t last long … maybe two weeks,’ Love told SI.com.

“So sad when you realize all you’re ever going to be is a 6-foot-10 multimillionaire ballplayer.”

Finally, another definition from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Accountant:  One of a mysterious race of mole people who resurface once a quarter and charge you to use Quicken.”

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

 

 

 

The college football bowl games seem determined to command attention far beyond what the games are worth.  In case you were busy alphabetizing your spice cabinet yesterday, there was a real nail-biter in the Miami Beach Bowl game when Tulsa beat Central Michigan 55-10.  But the “bowl game story of the moment” has nothing to do with what will happen on the field; rather it has to do with who will not be on the field.

Last week, Leonard Fournette (RB-LSU) said he would not play for LSU in its bowl game – whichever one they are in.  Yesterday Christian McCaffrey (RB-Stanford) made the same decision with regard to playing for Stanford in its upcoming bowl game.  Both players said they were going to focus on training and preparation for the NFL Draft.  And the commentators were off and running – – so to speak.

Not only do I support Fournette and McCaffrey and their decision here; I wonder why any player who is a likely first round pick in next April’s NFL Draft would risk injury in a stupid bowl game.  In the case of these two players, their decision is doubly smart.  Running backs in the NFL have a short shelf-life and many scouts/GMs try to assess how much “tread is left on the tires” of a potential draftee.  Injury history plays a huge role also in drafting decisions.  So, what is the value returned to the player for taking the field in a meaningless game about a month after the real games are over?

The bowl games are nothing more than a money-grab by bowl organizing committees and schools and TV networks.  Do not tell me about the grand traditions and the history and all that argle-bargle; they are a money-grab with a longstanding marketing campaign.  What Leonard Fournette and Christian McCaffrey have done is to look to an event that was founded purely on economics and made a personal decision that is founded in pure economics.  They will stay home and watch other people play the game.

They are not trying to convince others to skip the contests – although their choices might be a model others could choose to follow.  Their actions are neither seditious nor are they abandoning the institution that will soon be their alma mater.  Enough already …

While I am sort of on the topic of the intersection of football and economics, I read a report about a week ago that said FOX has sold off more than 90% of its advertising slots for the Super Bowl in February.  On the surface, that sounds great but the pace of the sales is lagging compared to last year when all the ad slots were sold out by Thanksgiving.  People who follow the world of marketing and advertising far more closely and analytically than I do opine that the drop in TV ratings for the NFL early in this season is the cause for the lagging sales.  If all that the ad buyers are looking at are ratings numbers, they are likely to continue to be disappointed since this week’s games will fall on Saturday night (Christmas Eve) and Sunday evening (Christmas day).

According to various reports I have read, FOX is charging $5M for a 30-second ad slot in the “premium times” within the game structure.  Per one report, FOX is willing to negotiate that price downward if the ad buyer also purchases some ad time within other FOX TV properties.  In any event, it will be expensive for advertisers to get their message out during Super Bowl LI on 5 February 2017.  Expense or no expense, at least one advertiser figures that the Super Bowl is an ideal vehicle for its product:

• Avocadoes from Mexico has been a Super Bowl advertiser in the past and has evidently bought time once again this year.
• According to folks who follow purchasing trends, Super Bowl Sunday is the day of the year when Americans consume more avocadoes than on any other single day as guacamole seems to be a staple culinary option for Super Bowl parties.  Whether one calls it a culinary trend or a social trend, Americans seem to have transformed the day of the Super Bowl game from a time to watch the big game into a day to stuff calories down one’s gullet.

I know it is not going to happen, but what I would love to see for one of the Super Bowl ads from Anheuser Busch is the return of the three Budweiser frogs and Louie the Lizard.  I always thought those were clever advertisements and they have been “gone” for at least 15 years now.  Maybe it is time for a nostalgia trip?

Looking overseas at English football – what we call soccer – the Premier League is about at the halfway point in the season.  At the top of the table – what we call the standings – are the usual suspects; Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham and Manchester United are the top six teams.  You may recall last year that Leicester City “shocked the world” and won the league championship as predicted by just about no one.  So, where are the defending champions this year?

Here are the “Bottom Six” teams at about the hallway mark of the season.  Remember, the three bottom teams at the end of the season are relegated to the Championship which sounds prestigious but it is actually the second division of English football.

• Leicester City  17 points
• Burnley FC      17 points
• Crystal Palace 15 points
• Sunderland      14 points
• Swansea City  12 points
• Hull City          12 points

Relegation involves more than a loss of prestige in English football.  There are 20 teams in the Premier League and the television revenue generated by that league drops almost 100 million pounds into the coffers of each of the 20 teams.  By contrast, teams in the Championship get money from TV contracts in the neighborhood of 3 million pounds.  Avoiding relegation is a big deal in English football…

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

“No kidding. Jazz 7-footer Jeff Withey and former Playmate of the Year Kennedy Summers announced their engagement.

“No truth to the rumor they plan to honeymoon at Staples Center.”

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

 

 

There are two items in the sports landscape today that I find a bit disquieting.  Sports ought to be about entertainment, competition, achievement and things like that.  There are plenty of outlets in life for drudgery, frustration, and failure in life; sports need not take on that sort of aura.  And then I read about what has come to be known as “Wakey-leaks”.  Here is the Cliff’s Notes version:

• A former Wake Forest QB and assistant coach was let go when a new coaching staff was assembled.  The ousted assistant coach became part of the school’s radio broadcast team.
• He had extensive access to the team, the coaches, the practices and – evidently – the game planning.
• He then took game plans and material of that sort and provided it occasionally to assistant coaches on Wake Forest’s upcoming opponents.

This degree of treachery does not rank with that of Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold or the Rosenbergs because “leaking a game plan” just is not a big deal compared to the betrayals of those other folks.  However, in sports, that is pretty far down on the scale of “acceptable behavior”.  We can take some solace in the fact that the leaker is going to find it very difficult to get a job in or around football down the line; he had better have paid attention in class while an undergrad at Wake Forest.  But there is another side to this coin…

As many as three assistant coaches on opposing teams allegedly got these pilfered/leaked game plans over the past couple of years and none of them blew the whistle.  I understand the importance of winning in sports.  Bill Parcels famously said you are what your record says you are and if your record is something like 3-9, that means you are a loser and you are likely to be out of a job.  Nevertheless, what will put an end to “Wakey-leaks” is the fact that it came to light and it could have come to light a year ago or maybe two years ago had just one opposing assistant coach stood up on his hind legs and said something akin to:

Sorry; this is wrong; I will not be a party to anything like this.

The “Wakey-leaks” leaker is someone you should never trust again; I think that pretty much goes without saying.  For me, the folks who were the recipients of the leaker’s largesse and who also kept silent about it are hugely untrustworthy now and down the line.

There is a second “situation” in the sports world – sadly it too relates to college football – that I find disheartening.  The University of Minnesota football team threatened to boycott all football activities – meaning they would not play in whatever bowl game they were supposed to play in – because the school authorities suspended 10 players on the team over an incident of sexual assault.  It seems that there is exactly no doubt that sexual activities happened here because one of the geniuses took a video of the activities on his phone.  Once again, here is the Cliff’s Notes version:

• A woman – allegedly inebriated – was assaulted by multiple men on the football team.  She said the first activity was consensual but the ones that followed were not.
• Police investigated and found insufficient evidence to press charges where the evidentiary standard is “beyond a reasonable doubt”.
• The school conducted its own investigation as mandated by Title IX and found a “preponderance of evidence” showed culpability for ten players and it suspended them from school activities and recommended expulsion for some of the ten.
• The remaining teammates allege that there was no due process in the school’s investigation and decided that a boycott of football activities was the way to stand with their teammates.

There are loads of elements to this story that can engender debate and confrontation.  In this case, the fact of the assault seems not to be in question so this is not something equivalent to the Duke lacrosse case or the fraternity rape at the University of Virginia that did not happen.  However, the names of the players who the school found to be culpable are out there – it is pretty easy to see who is not on the team anymore – while the identity of the victim remains protected.  If even one of those ten players is – in reality – innocent of wrongdoing, that situation is genuinely unfair.  If the players wish to protest that element of this story, that is their right.  I would not support them in their cause, but I could understand their displeasure.

Not knowing the full details of the school’s investigation, I do not know to what degree there was or was not “due process”.  I cannot pretend to be a legal scholar but it seems to me that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the US Constitution describe what “due process” is and they also specify that “due process” in all its forms apply to “criminal prosecutions” and/or “capital or otherwise infamous crime”.  What that says to me is that whatever the University of Minnesota does in its investigation is not constrained to accommodate “due process”.  Moreover, the explicitly different standard for judgement in a so-called Title IX investigation stands those procedures apart from the judicial handling of criminal cases.  Did the university’s investigation run rough-shod over what might pass for “due process’ in a Title IX investigation?  That is impossible to know since the school shields itself from public scrutiny here based on federal privacy laws.

There is plenty of meat for discussion and debate – and possibly reform – here.  Alas, it seems as if none will happen.  After a meeting with school administrators, the team called off the boycott without the suspended players being reinstated after getting assurances from school administrators that the ten players would get a fair hearing next month.  That is pretty thin gruel after the original statements of “solidarity with teammates” and appeals to a foundation piece of US jurisprudence – even if due process may not apply here.  My willingness to side with the players here was significantly diminished when I read reports along this line.

However, here is where I got off the train completely.  In this morning’s Washington Post, in a short article summarizing the current state of play in this matter, here is the concluding paragraph:

“Many of the players who initially backed the boycott Thursday had not read the university’s 82-page report detailing the woman’s specific allegations.”

It seems to me that one needs to know at least some of the particulars prior to any sort of claim that due process was violated or not afforded by the university in its investigation.  Without reading that report, I am left to imagine what level of analysis and critical thinking went into the original fervor that led to the announcement of a boycott – prior to folding one’s cards and moving on to play in the bowl game without the ten suspended teammates.

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

 

The NBA owners and players have seemingly followed the lead of MLB’s owners and players and found a way to avoid a work stoppage.  Like baseball, the NBA is hitting high notes in the chorus of revenue streams; everyone – players and owners – are awash in cash.  And, sanity prevailed in whatever negotiations took place because there is a deal ready to be ratified that will allow those revenue streams to continue to flow inward.

There is one item that I wish were in the new CBA that is not there.  I would have liked to see the NBA and the NBPA negotiate a way to put an end to “one-and-done” in college basketball.  The NFL and MLB have agreements in their CBAs that avoid the one-and-done scenarios in those sports and those provisions have been around for a long time.  I would have preferred for the NBA’s new CBA to have taken care of that problem.

My preferred model for eliminating “one-and-done” is the MLB model.  A player may declare for the MLB draft and even be drafted right out of high school but if he does not sign with the team that took him and opts to go to college, he is precluded from going into professional baseball associated with MLB for 3 years.  This gives the player the right to make his own decision as to what he wants to do with himself; he does not have to go thru college baseball or independent leagues but if he chooses to go to college he commits to being there for 3 years.  Some folks have argued that in basketball, any imposed collegiate tenure should be limited to 2 years.  I would prefer 3 years but would happily settle for 2 years because that would be better than “one-and-done” for college basketball and for the NBA.

Yes, some players under that scheme would choose to go overseas and play pro basketball in Europe instead of going to college and playing there.  Good for them!  If they have targeted pro basketball as their “life’s work” and they think that playing in Europe is better for them than two or three years in college, mazel tov.  We are talking here about young men who are legally defined as adults at age 18; they would not have all the options available to them and they would get to make their own choices about what to do once they are out of high school.  They would know the rules; they could make their own decisions.  That seems to me to be pretty much along the path some like to call “The American Way”.

The new NBA/NBPA agreement – assuming it is ratified by all parties – will be in force for the next 5 years so it appears as if “one-and-done” will be with us for at least that far into the future.  Too bad.  I shall see this as a “missed opportunity” to make an improvement that would cost no one any money…

It appears that there were underinflated footballs used in the recent Giants/Steelers game.  The story goes that the Giants tested some balls and found them to be in the 11.5 psi range when the rules say they cannot be lower than 12.5 psi.  The NFL said it will not do any investigating here and then went into what I call “process talk mode”.  It is easy to recognize this mode; this is what happens as soon as anyone brings up a subject that management does not want to discuss because it is “uncomfortable” at least and “downright illegal/immoral” at worst.

The league justification here is that there will be no investigation because the chain of custody of the footballs from the time the officials measured the pressures before the game until the time the balls were used in the game was unbroken.  If that explanation is sufficient for you, let me simply say that you will never be the “Chief of Security” for any organization that I operate.

I believe – and since I do not read minds and since I do not have access to covert surveillance of the NFL executive suites – that the NFL does not want to investigate this matter for a simple and direct reason.

• If in fact the chain of custody of the balls was intact and if the officials measured and recorded the original pressures correctly and accurately, then the reason the balls on the field were too low in pressure is almost assuredly due to the Ideal Gas Law.

Those of us who majored in chemistry know a lot about the Ideal Gas Law and Roger Goodell is someone who fervently wishes never to have to make any decisions where there might be even a tangential relationship with the Ideal Gas Law.  If the league did this and found that the balls in the Giants/Steelers game were “underinflated” due to the fact of cold weather, that would reopen the whole Deflategate matter.  Roger Goodell would probably rather eat a diet of caterpillars and hagfish slime for the rest of his life than to reopen the whole Deflategate matter.

If a neutral observer wished to test the Ideal Gas Law as it applies to the NFL, there is a game this weekend that could provide a natural laboratory.  The Packers/Bears game in Chicago has a weather forecast that says it will be near zero during game time.  If someone pressurized an NFL football to 13.0 psi (the mid-range of the allowable pressure for a ball in a game) at indoor room temperature an hour before the game and then took that ball out into the stands until the middle of the 3^rd quarter for example and then measured the pressure again, I would be willing to wager a tidy sum that the internal pressure will be less than the “legal limit” of 12.5 psi.  Here is another wager I would be willing to make;

No one involved with the NFL Front Office would do such a test or sanction such a test or put any credence in such test results if confronted with them.

As Deflategate becomes history, I think it is important that we remember a couple of things about it:

1. It taught a lot of people about the Ideal Gas Law who never took a science course in their life.
2. I also suggested that there might be something identified in the future as the Ideal Ass Law and that Roger Goodell might be the example that set in motion the research to expound such a law.

Finally, an old friend and reader of these rants just gave me a book titled The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm.  I plan to use some of the material from that magnum opus on occasion and today I present the dictionary’s definition of:

“AARP: American Association of Retired Persons.  An organization that sends out welcome letters to people over fifty to remind them that they will soon be dead.”

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

 

 

In the past, I have referred to José Canseco as “the gift that keeps on giving”.  I realize that someone else has applied that label to genital herpes but my reference here has a completely different meaning and intent.  I can count on Canseco to do or say something at least once a year that will provide material for one of these rants.  He is like an ATM that never runs out of twenty-dollar bills.

On Monday, one of my news aggregators had a headline from Bloomberg.com that made me stop and do a double-take.  Here is that headline:

“Jose Canseco Has Some Big-League Advice For Trump When It Come to the Federal Reserve”

Here is the link to that Bloomberg.com item.

The report says that Canseco should become the Chairman of the Federal Reserve in place of Janet Yellen.  Should that happen, Canseco assures the President-elect that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be at “40K in 4 years”.  For the record, the Dow is currently at 20K.

Bloomberg.com is a reliable news source; but this report seemed sufficiently outrageous, that I went looking to see if anyone else had a similar report.  It turns out that lots of news outlets had the same thing.  Fortune had an article that reproduced Tweets from Canseco to the President-elect saying that he would be open to being Ambassador to Cuba or to be the Fed Chair.  CBSNews.com had the story as did the SF Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair.  In this era of so-called “fake news” – such a contradiction in terms – one needs to be careful when taking in something that is out of the ordinary.

Canseco ended some his tweets with “#Yeswecanseco”.  I gotta give him high marks for creativity on that one.  And once again I have to acknowledge José Canseco as “the gift that keeps on giving” …

I also read yesterday that the NFL will play 4 “London Games” next year:

1. Saints/Dolphins
2. Ravens/Jags
3. Vikes/Browns and
4. Cards/Rams.

In addition, the Pats and Raiders will play in Mexico City next year.  That will be two years in a row for the Raiders in Mexico City; could that be a signal that the NFL might want to put the Raiders there instead of in Las Vegas?  I am not a tea-leaf reader but I am sure someone will find a way to build a logical bridge between the facts of the games and the prospects of a new home for the Raiders.

However, since the beginning of this rant ventured every so slightly into the realm of politics, that announcement by the NFL seems as if it might draw the attention of the President-elect.  After all, one of the cornerstones of the message from the President-elect throughout the campaign was that he wanted to keep American jobs in America.  There are lots of people who work on an “as employed basis” at NFL games as parking attendants and as concession vendors and as security personnel.  Those folks will be missing out on “five work days” and their jobs will surely be out-sourced to the UK and to Mexico.

Before anyone takes the political argument here seriously, let me say that my hidden agenda here is to put a lid on “London Games” specifically and on foreign games – outside of places such as Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver etc.  The Pats have to travel 2300 miles to get to Mexico City for a one-off game; is that really necessary?  Does that make a significant difference to the NFL?

The NFL has been experimenting with putting an 8^th official on the field for the past several Exhibition Seasons.  Division 1 college games often had 8 officials on the field and in 2015 the “eight-man crew” became standard.  Some folks now say that the NFL is poised to do the same and expand its officiating crews.  There is a yin and a yang to that expansion – if indeed it is being seriously contemplated:

Yin:  More officials on the field will mean more eyes on close plays with more officials having a good view of what happened; that ought to mean “getting more calls right”; it is hard to contend that this would be anything but beneficial.

Yang:  More officials on the field will almost assuredly mean more penalty flags; it is hard to contend that this would be anything but detrimental.

Finally, here is an item from Brad Rock’s column Rock On in the Deseret News yesterday regarding the upcoming bowl game between Boise St. and Baylor in Phoenix:

“The smaller bowl in Phoenix this year is the Motel 6 Cactus Bowl.

“Nobody’s saying it will be lightly attended, but when the motto is ‘We’ll leave the light on for you …’”

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