Category: Daily Rants

Yesterday, I talked about the daily fantasy sports websites and their advertising presence on NFL telecasts. I mentioned that these sites had come under some criticism/scrutiny recently. Last week, the Nevada State Gaming Control Board ruled that daily fantasy sports is a form of gambling and therefore those websites will need to have a state- issued license to operate in Nevada. Here is a statement from the Chairman of that entity:

“We are saying that daily fantasy sports are a gambling game under the statutory definition. We’re also saying that these are sports pools, which is when someone is in the business of accepting wagers on sporting events through any system or method of wagering. We have found that it is a wager, and obviously, it’s on a sporting event, and DFS [Daily Fantasy Sports] companies are in the business of accepting those wagers.”

As you might expect, the folks who run the websites see this matter in a completely different light. Consider this statement from FanDuel:

“[FanDuel] is terribly disappointed that the Nevada Gaming Control Board has decided that only incumbent Nevada casinos may offer fantasy sports. This decision stymies innovation and ignores the fact that fantasy sports is a skill-based entertainment product loved and played by millions of sports fans. This decision deprives these fans of a product that has been embraced broadly by the sports community, including professional sports teams, leagues and media partners.”

Please note that this response hits at “plus-points” like “innovation” and “fun for millions of fans” while ignoring the fundamental issue. It is a form of gambling and that means it needs to be regulated. Note also, FanDuel calls this a form of “skill-based entertainment”.

Draft Kings has a PR/Communications Department too and issued this statement:

“We understand that the gaming industry is important to Nevada, and, for that reason, they are taking this exclusionary approach against the increasingly popular fantasy sports industry. We strongly disagree with this decision and will work diligently to ensure Nevadans have the right to participate in what we strongly believe is legal entertainment that millions of Americans enjoy.”

Once again the statement points to popular ideas that most will agree with – level playing field and opportunities for all – but seems not to address at all the Gaming Control Board’s assertion that these sites are running a gambling operation.

This entire situation stems from the actions of the US Congress and the US Department of Justice with regard to gambling using the Internet as the vehicle for the game(s). It is OK to use the Internet for daily fantasy sports wagering and wagering on horse races but not for wagering on the outcome of individual games or not to play poker for real money. It seems to me that if one is opposed to gambling, one should oppose all forms of Internet gambling; but of course, nothing is ever so simple or so definitive when it comes to Congressional actions.

Adding to the murkiness here is the fact that several players on daily fantasy websites have filed suit against the sites saying that the games are rigged because of alleged actions of insiders who know the betting patterns. Of course, the plaintiffs allege that they would never have played in the first place had they only known… Who knows? My strong suspicion is that no one who won money from the web sites is a plaintiff in such a lawsuit…

Another sports-related story has gotten a lot of coverage in the past week or so is the Lamar Odom health matter. Odom went to a legal brothel in Nevada – the Bunny Ranch – and reportedly binged on “herbal Viagra”, alcohol and possibly cocaine for hours on end. He was found in an unconscious and unresponsive state and rushed by emergency vehicle to a hospital in Las Vegas. He spent a few days in a comatose state fighting for his life; he is reported to be doing better and communicating with visitors as of the last report. My first reaction was to ignore the obvious opportunity here to make any snarky remarks about someone checking into a brothel and binging on “herbal Viagra” – sold under the trade name “Reload” no less. However, the massive reporting on this story requires me to ask:

Why is this establishment always called a brothel and never a whorehouse?

Do they offer soup or broth for sale there?

What they do offer for sale there are …

Then yesterday, I saw a report that said someone got into Lamar Odom’s room while he was unconscious and stole his belongings. The report said he had a bodyguard with him at the building – not in his room obviously – and the bodyguard is mystified as to how this might have happened. Let me see…

You are rather easily recognized and known as someone who has money and material possessions.

You go to a “house of ill repute” which just might attract a clientele of under-developed consciences.

Then you pass out in a room for a few hours and wonder how it might come to pass that some of your “stuff” has disappeared.

I do not think we need to resurrect Sherlock Holmes to get to the bottom of the motive and the opportunity for skullduggery here…

Finally, here is an item from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald from about a month ago:

“Shannon Briggs fought Mike Marrone at the Hard Rock near Hollywood on Saturday with the crowd advertised to include Evander Holyfield, Vladimir Klistchko and Lennox Lewis. It is seldom a good thing when the people sitting ringside are more interesting than the people in the ring.”

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

According to reports, the revenue generated by the networks televising NFL games is up again this year. For the first 5 weeks of the 2015 season, the total national TV revenue – this does not count the local TV deals that various individual local stations have with specific teams – totaled $947.7M from advertisers. Last year for the first 5 weeks, that total was 905.5M so 2015 revenue is up 4.67%. The NFL has encountered more than a bit of negative publicity in the last year with regard to Deflategate, domestic violence, bizarre on-field officiating calls and the like; none of that seems to have made its product less attractive to advertisers.

Deeper down in that data, I found that the largest single advertiser in terms of money paid for commercial spots in 2015 is FanDuel and they were not significant players in the advertising world even a year ago. Draft Kings is the third largest spender for advertising slots this year. Between the two of them, the two daily fantasy websites have spent $81M to buy time in the first five weeks of the NFL season during televised NFL games. While watching any NFL game, should you feel inundated with daily fantasy football ads, there is a good reason for that; the two sites have spent 8.6% of all the advertising money on that product.

By another measure, the NFL seems also to have weathered its storm of bad publicity. Ratings for the NFL games are up in 2015 once again. The largest gain in viewers is for Thursday Night Football which shows an increase of 10.4% in terms of the number of eyeballs on the screens. Here is the “measured” audience level for various NFL programming through 5 weeks of the 2015 season:

Sunday Night Football – 23.9 million viewers
CBS Sunday afternoon – 18.2 million viewers
Thursday Night Football – 18.1 million viewers
Monday Night Football – 13.2 million viewers

I can understand why MNF trails the field here since it is on a cable network and not “over the air TV”. I am a bit surprised at the difference between MNF and the other NFL programming but not nearly as surprised as I am at the rapid evolution of Thursday Night Football into a programming bonanza.

The NFL started Thursday night games in 2006 only for the second half of the season and telecast those games on NFL Network only. Since 2012, there have been Thursday night games for the full season and since 2014 the games are on both CBS and NFL Network. That is a very young product as compared to “Sunday afternoon football” which was the revenue source that made the NFL the TV juggernaut that it is. Nonetheless, the number of viewers is a dead heat as of the early stages of 2015…

Since I mentioned FanDuel and Draft Kings above, the fantasy websites have been under a bit of pressure recently – and I do not mean simply from TV viewers or Internet users who have been bombarded with the same ads over and over and over…

Memo to FanDuel and Draft Kings: If you are going to buy 20 advertising slots on Sunday NFL games over the 12 hours of their broadcast, you need to have more than 2 ads that you will have run. At some point, you make me want to throw a shoe at the TV…

There were allegations that some employees of the website may have used “inside information” on betting patterns to playa the daily fantasy games for themselves and several states – including Nevada – are investigating the business practices of the companies to determine if they are indeed “gambling” as opposed to “games of chance”. The Congress of the United States in its minuscule wisdom and as an attempt not to criminalize the six bazillion fantasy football and baseball leagues that exist in offices and families around the country declared that fantasy sports would not fall under the auspices of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006. That was a laudable move and a popular move; nonetheless, it now creates the situation where daily fantasy sports is not considered gambling whereas online poker is. Forget for the moment the legalities and the popularity of such games; they are both gambling; at the start of the “game” people put up some money and at the end of the “game” the one who has played by the rules and amassed the best outcome collects more money than he/she put in to start taking some or all of the money from those who had less than the best outcome.

Anyone who has read these rants for any length of time knows with certainty that I am not opposed to gambling. I am cynical enough to believe that with huge amounts of money at stake and the only interface between the bettors and “the pot” being a computer hooked to the Internet there is the opportunity for “shenanigans”. That applies to online poker, daily fantasy sports, and other wagering events. Recall that a group of folks hacked into a Breeders’ Cup Pick Six Pool and gathered for themselves the single winning ticket for that pool. That happened about 15 years ago and the prize then was on the order of $2M. Well, if FanDuel and Draft Kings can spend $81M between them in only 5 weeks just on advertising, you might expect that they are “handling” sums that are far in excess of $2M at any time.

My position on this matter has been simple and consistent for the last 30 years:

People are going to gamble. They may bet on sporting events or dice or cards but they are going to gamble.

Criminalizing gambling will have the same outcome as criminalizing alcohol did in the 1920s or drugs through until today. It will mean only that the profits from such enterprises will fall to criminals and that there will be no tax collected on said profits.

Finally, here are comments from two sports observers about a happenstance related to the form of gambling known as dog racing:

“Two greyhounds at Bluffs Run Greyound Park in Council Bluffs, Iowa, have tested positive for potential PEDs.

“Which probably explains why the hounds’ back legs started smoking at the starting line.” [Dwight Perry, Seattle Times]

And …

“Two greyhounds at Bluffs Run racetrack in Iowa have tested positive for PEDs.

“Under questioning by authorities, one of the dogs said he didn’t ingest anything except regular Purina Dog Chow and water from his home toilet.” [Brad Dickson, Omaha World-Herald]

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

Yesterday, I mentioned 3 football coaches who had been fired recently; and as I posted that rant, I learned that Steve Spurrier had resigned as the head football coach at South Carolina. While this year’s South Carolina team is not doing well, Steve Spurrier leaves college football with a distinguished record of 228-89-2 and a national championship. At the collegiate level, he has been successful in taking downtrodden programs and making them winners. He did that at Duke, Florida and again at South Carolina. He also had a successful run in the USFL with the Tampa Bay Bandits but his venture into the NFL coaching for Danny Boy Snyder was well-short of successful.

I always liked Spurrier for his willingness to throw out zingers with regard to his opponents. He did it with the guise of humor, but inside his comments were barbs. He famously called Florida State University – Free Shoes University; he pointed out that winning in the NFL was more difficult than winning in college because there are no Vanderbilts in the NFL. When a fire in the football dorm at Auburn reportedly destroyed 20 books, he said that the real tragedy here was that 15 of them were not colored yet. However, my favorite of his quips was the reason he gave for wanting to play Georgia early in the season:

“I sort of always liked playing them that second game because you could always count on them having two or three key players suspended.”

Steve Spurrier put winning teams on the field without making college football out to be something equivalent to life and death. If for that reason alone, I will miss him as part of college football. Good luck to the Ol’ Ball Coach.

With Steve Spurrier out of college football, there is a little less “good stuff” around to take the edge off the stupidity injected therein by the NCAA. LSU’s outstanding running back, Leonard Fournette grew up in New Orleans and survived Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of that disaster. This year, a hurricane delivered serious flooding to South Carolina such that the LSU/South Carolina game that had been scheduled in South Carolina had to be moved to Baton Rouge. Fournette wanted to take his game-worn jersey and auction it off with the proceeds going to the relief efforts in South Carolina. Even before the game happened, Fournette wrote and released a moving letter expressing sympathy and prayers for the folks in South Carolina going through what they were going through.

And so, what did the NCAA do? They told him he could not do that because that violated one of the NCAA’s precious rules about special benefits for a student-athlete and amateurism. Seriously, that is what the grand overseers of collegiate athletics said; these are nominally the adults in charge here. That ruling lasted only a few hours when someone in the NCAA hierarchy came to his/her senses and convinced the nominal adults-in-charge that the NCAA already had enough black-eyes according to the public at large and needed to think about this one just a bit more.

At the end of the day, Fournette was informed that he could indeed auction off his jersey for this charitable purpose. The NCAA did this in a formal statement but that formal statement did not include any of the following as it should have:

1. Start off with the phrase, “After further review…”

2. An admission that its initial reaction was a stupid knee-jerk.

3. An opening bid for the jersey up for auction or – – even better – – an offer to match whatever the final bid was so that the charitable contribution here would be doubled. Sigh…

This next story has been around for a while and I have refrained from comment because it has too many twists and turns that I do not understand. I have been waiting for some clarity here but since it involves FIFA, that is not likely to come about. FIFA announced that Sepp Blatter was going to be “provisionally suspended” for 90 days and then Blatter announced he would appeal that “provisional suspension”. Set aside the fact that I have no idea what distinguishes a “provisional suspension” form an “actual suspension” or a “sky-blue sleeping artisinal suspension”. “Suspension” to me is like a light switch; one is either suspended or not.

Moving on… Joining Blatter in this “provisional suspension status” are UAEFA President Michael Platini and FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke. If you think that makes this matter any clearer, it does not. Let me explain:

Because Blatter is “provisionally suspended”, he “is not allowed to represent FIFA in any capacity, act on the organization’s behalf, or communicate to media or other stakeholders as a FIFA representative.” So, one might think that is what the meat of a “provisional suspension” is.

Well, then the same ought to apply to Messr. Valcke, right? The problem with that logic is that Valcke was fired from his position a month ago. So, if he had already been fired, de facto he would not have been able to do any of the things that Blatter is forbidden to do. So, what does the ‘provisional suspension” add here?

Another interesting twist in the story is that Platini is now implicated in the same scandal/bribery allegations that have resulted in these “provisional suspensions”. Until now, Platini had been one of the folks on the inside track to be elected to replace Blatter as the major domo of FIFA. Oh swell…

The one thing in all of this latest FIFA mess that makes total sense are reports that FIFA took these actions to sever ties with Blatter et al. because several sponsors including big-time sponsors like McDonalds and Coca Cola urged FIFA to do so. The lesson here is the same one that Deep Throat indicated to Woodward and Bernstein in the Watergate scandal:

Follow the money…

Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle summed all of this up succinctly:

“Can’t wait for the Sepp Blatter biopic: ‘The Line on Ethics: Bend It Like Blatter.’”

Finally, a coach in another college sport is under scrutiny today. Rick Pitino has not been fired as the basketball coach at Louisville but he and his program are squirming under the microscopes of multiple investigations stemming from claims that basketball recruits had escorts hired for them as part of the recruiting process. These allegations come from Katina Powell’s book, Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen. I do not want to pile on here based on allegations made in a book I have not read and do not plan to read. I prefer to wait for the stage play based on the work of literature here. May I suggest that the title of the stage play be:

The Best Little Whorehouse in Louisville

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

With apologies to Charles Dickens, the topic today seemingly represents only the worst of times. Today, I want to talk about 3 football coaches who find themselves in a less-than-happy place.

A week ago, the Miami Dolphins fired Joe Philbin as the head coach and named Dan Campbell as the interim coach there. Only 6 months ago, Philbin got a contract extension from Dolphins’ owner Steven Ross which means that his termination has a bit of a soft landing; nonetheless, he is no longer a member of the rather exclusive fraternity of “NFL Head Coaches”.

Dan Campbell said that the Dolphins’ team needs to be challenged more. OK, he is there with the team and I am not – but at his first practice he got the players to do the old Oklahoma drill. [Google is your friend…] The best players on that team are making millions of dollars and their continued ability to pull down that sort of coin is dependent on them having healthy muscles and joints with which to carry out their athletic instincts and capability. Question for Interim Coach Dan Campbell:

How often do you think you can pull off practices like that before your “best players” make sure you do not become the permanent coach?

Dolphins’ owner, Steven Ross is very much into the publicity splash associated with things he does. He sells off small ownership pieces to celebrities to get his name in the papers and to get celebs identified with the team. Many folks think he will try to make a splashy hire here and will forego the chance to put in a call to fellow-owner, Danny Boy Snyder to find out just how well that works out. Don Shula is not coming out of retirement; neither is Bill Parcells; they would be “splashy hires” but that is not happening. Ergo:

How long until the rumor has it that Nick Saban will be returning to Miami to tend to “unfinished business” there?

Philbin was fired after Game 4 this season when the Jets dominated the Dolphins in a London Game. That makes two years in a row when the first London Game did not work out very well for an NFL coach. Last year, the Raiders fired Dennis Allen after the Raiders were blown out in the London Game. Ironically, the team administering that blow-out was the Dolphins coached by … Joe Philbin. If that is the start of a trend, Todd Bowles had best hope that he does not have to play in London in Week 4 next year.

So, are there any other NFL head coaches who might not be around to see the end of this season with their current teams? The answer is probably not – but if pressed I would offer these two up for consideration:

Jim Caldwell: The Lions are 0-5 and their Bye Week comes in Week 9. This is a franchise that knows all too well about the horrors of 0-16. Between now and the Bye Week, here is the Lions schedule:
Vs. Bears – Lions are a 3-point favorite at the moment
Vs. Vikes – Lions likely to be underdogs here
At Chiefs – without Jamaal Charles, the Chiefs are eminently beatable

Jim Tomsula: The Niners are 1-4 and their Bye Week comes in Week 10. He was dealt an impossible hand but there is no way that the GM and the Team President who is the son of the team owner will take the fall here…

At the collegiate level, Maryland fired Randy Edsall over the weekend. Make no mistake; he was not highly successful at Maryland and he was not always the most sociable fellow in the room. Please do not interpret even a syllable of what follows as any kind of argument that Maryland should have kept him on. The geniuses in charge of athletics and administration in College Park, MD put assistant coach Mike Locksley into the interim coach position. At his introductory press conference, Locksley said directly that there were a few things that were going to be done differently around there.

That is as it should be; when a new guy takes over – and in the deep recesses of his gut hopes that maybe this could turn into a permanent gig – he needs to do things differently and put his stamp on the program lest the changes turn out to be positive and he seemingly has nothing to do with those changes. So, let us take a cursory look at Mike Locksley’s history in football coaching:

He has been an assistant coach/offensive coordinator at 7 schools since 1992.

Starting in 2009 and lasting until the 4th game of the 2011 season, he was the head coach at New Mexico where he compiled a record of … wait for it … 2-26.

One of those 26 losses was in a game against Sam Houston State. That was the loss that cost him his job there.

One of his assistant coaches at New Mexico alleged that Locksley jumped on him and attacked him at a “contentious staff meeting”. That allegedly happened early in Locksley’s tenure there. The school suspended Locksley for 10 days without pay for that incident.

An admin assistant at New Mexico filed an EEO discrimination complaint against Locksley asserting age and sex discrimination. The complaint was eventually withdrawn.

The geniuses who run things at Maryland had best hope that whatever things need to be done differently in the football program there involve strategic decisions on the sidelines and not fisticuffs among the coaching staff…

Yesterday, USC fired head coach Steve Sarkisian. Recall before the season began, Sarkisian had an embarrassing situation in front of USC fans/boosters where he appeared to be drunk. His explanation was that it was all caused by a mixture of prescription meds and an adult beverage at the event and he said he was going to be evaluated to take care of any problems he might have. Then the season began…

According to reports, Sarkisian – in the midst of divorce proceedings – had to attend to “family matters” last Saturday evening and all did not go well. There was a practice scheduled for Sunday but Sarkisian was not there; according to a report, a player told ESPN’s Shelley Smith that Sarkisian “showed up lit” for team meetings on Sunday afternoon.

The first announcement from USC was that Sarkisian would be on an indefinite leave of absence; that happened on Sunday evening. Yesterday afternoon, the announcement came that USC had fired Steve Sarkisian.

USC is not doing well on the field this year as measured by USC standards but this termination really does not reflect a “coaching problem”; Steve Sarkisian clearly has things going on in his life that have nothing to do with football that he needs to resolve. It would seem to me that separating himself from the pressures and demands of being the head football coach at USC would have to give him a better chance to take the time to deal with those things in his life and to make them better.

Godspeed, Steve Sarkisian…

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

“Ex-football coach Lou Holtz, to the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, on the state of his golf game: ‘While a lot of people want to shoot their age, I’m trying to shoot my weight. If I gain 5 pounds, I think I can do that.’”

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

With regard to Chase Utley’s “illegal slide” which happened also to break the leg of Mets’ shortstop Reuben Tejada, I have seen hundreds of slides that were way off second base where the runner could not have touched the bag if he still had a bat in his hand – – and there has been no ruling of an “illegal slide”. Utley’s slide was “violent” in the sense that he intended to make significant contact with Tejada prior to a throw to first base – and indeed he made that contact. However, from every angle of replay that I have seen, it appears to me that Utley can easily touch second base with his left hand as he slides through the play.

Suspending Utley for two games in NY might be a good idea simply from the perspective of maintaining order at those games but I am not so sure it is a good idea from the perspective of baseball history and the baseball rules. As I understand the rule here, an important aspect of the “illegality” is contained in the phrase “away from the base”. I cannot see where Utley was “away from the base” and a suspension here sets a precedent that I doubt baseball wants to set i.e. the violence of a collision or the outcome of a collision has an effect on the determination of “guilt” in the matter.

Utley will appeal the suspension and MLB will make its determination “posthaste”. That by itself is a departure from the normal for MLB which usually would take 8 days to determine if it was raining outside…

Whilst on the subject of baseball, consider the career stats of these two players:

Player A: Played 17 years; BA .273; OPS .891; 5 All-Star Games; Career WAR 2.51

Player B: Played 21 years; BA .297; OPS .937; 14 All-Star Games; Career WAR
5.66

“Player A” is Jorge Posada and he has a plaque in centerfield in Yankee Stadium as of this year. “Player B” is Alex Rodriguez. Just saying…

Looking at the final MLB standings for the 2015 season, several things stand out to me:

1. The Phillies had a negative run differential of 155 around the time of the All-Star break and no one else was nearly that bad. However, the Phillies did NOT wind up with the worst run differential for MLB this year. The Braves cratered in the second half of the season to finish at minus-187 while the Phillies staggered home at minus-183. By the way, the next worst to those two were the Tigers and the Reds both at minus-114.

2. The Rangers won their division despite having a run differential of only +18. Compare that with the division winning Blue Jays who had a run differential of +221.

3. The Dodgers and the Giants had identical road records (37-44). The Dodgers run differential was +72 and the Giants run differential was +68. Nevertheless, the Dodgers finished 8 full game ahead of the Giants in the standings.

Here is a stat I ran across somewhere but did not record where I saw it. My guess is that I saw it in a magazine at my doctor’s office because it was hand-written on a piece of paper from a note pad with the logo of a drug company on it.

David Ortiz is one of only 4 players in baseball history to have 3 World Series championships and 500 home runs. The other 3 players are Reggie Jackson, Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth.

Moving right along, you have probably read reports about a confrontation between Matt Barnes and Derek Fisher. Here is how Scott Ostler summed it up in the SF Chronicle last weekend:

“Matt Barnes beats up Derek Fisher because Fisher is dating Barnes’ estranged wife, Gloria Govan. Can’t blame Fisher. Since Barnes is dating other women, Fisher assumed Govan had cleared waivers.”

I think there is another angle at work here:

Phil Jackson hired Derek Fisher to coach the Knicks specifically because Fisher was steeped in the triangle offense and could teach the triangle offense to the Knicks.

Perhaps – I said PERHAPS – Fisher was merely finding out how things work in a different sort of “triangle”.

In the past, I have summarized here the futility of the national soccer team of San Marino which always enters the qualifying rounds for the European Cup and, more often than not, exits the qualifying rounds having been demolished by other sides. In this year’s qualifying rounds, the Sammarinese side managed to score a goal in an away game against Lithuania. San Marino did not win the game but this was their first goal in an away game since scoring one against Latvia in 2001. By the way, San Marino did not win that game against Latvia 14 years ago either.

In any event, the “away goal” was such an anomaly that the entire bench for San Marino emptied and ran onto the pitch to join Matteo Vitaioli in his celebration of this rare event. Such a team display on the pitch and away from the team area on the sidelines is not acceptable in soccer but according to reports, the referee did not issue warning cards to any of the celebrants from the sidelines. He probably recognized the rarity of what he had just witnessed and wanted to take in the moment for himself…

Finally, here is a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald about the last crop of folks inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame:

“Eleven new members were inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame: Dikembe Mutombo, John Calipari and nine people I care about even less.”

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

I watch a lot of sporting events on television for the simple reason that I enjoy doing that. So, my complaint of the moment has nothing to do with some underlying dislike for the TV product. Rather it has to do with maintaining interest.

I have never suffered from ADHD; I do not have the problem of a short attention span. Nonetheless, too many games on TV take too long to finish. MLB has recognized that they do not want a significant fraction of their 9-inning games to take almost 4 hours. They have tried to infuse the game with a couple of “speed-up rules” which have not materially changed the game nor which have caused the majority of games to drop down close to the 2-hour mark. More can be done, but give MLB some credit for doing something. Now let me tell you two other sports that need some “fixing”…

College football games – and I do love college football – are getting longer and longer and… For a college football game to take 3 hours and 45 minutes is not unusual anymore; some games hit the 4-hour mark. The typical NFL game takes 3 hours and 15 minutes and while that does not sound all that much shorter than a college game, remember that both games are played to a 60-minute clock so the question is why such a big difference in duration. Here are two ideas:

1. In college, the clock stops on every first down until the crew sets the chains. In a game where there are 50 first downs recorded between the two teams, that might add a full 10 minutes to the game’s duration. If the clock ran while the crew hustled to set the chains and resume play, that would save the down time plus it would result in fewer plays in the game and potentially fewer first downs to stop the clock. I think the rules mavens for college football ought to take a close look at this issue.

2. Unlike baseball where a retarded pace of play directly adds time to the game duration – think of all those batters who need to adjust their gloves and cups after every pitch and all those pitchers who need to stare down every batter on every pitch – the pace of play in most college football games is plenty fast. For many teams the pace is truly frenetic. However, that frenetic pace produces more plays per game which produces more points per game which leads to more commercial breaks which makes the telecast take close to 4 hours. I do not advocate rules to impair teams that play up-tempo; I do not want college football to return to the Woody Hayes “three yards and a cloud of dust” mode. So, I have to file this in the bin of “problems identified for which I have not figured out a solution”…

Basketball games – both college games and NBA games – also take longer than they need to. Particularly in college games, the final 3 minutes of a game might take 20 or even 30 minutes to complete. The issue is the number of timeouts that each team has and the number of game delays that officials allow such that coaches create “unofficial timeouts.” Here the rule makers can have an immediate effect on the problem and the “competition committee folks” who create points of emphasis for the officials can also.

Given that each team will get 4 clock-driven timeouts per half, each team does not need 5 timeouts to call at their discretion. In fact, they really only need 2 per team. Right there, you could effect a time savings of 10 minutes per game. One other benefit would be that with only 2 timeouts per team, you would get far fewer timeouts called after grabbing a loose ball on the floor.

Moreover, substitutions for players who have fouled out need not take a full minute with the players going over to the coach for instruction. The sub should be on the court and the game should be resumed in 10 – 15 seconds and none of the players on the floor who have not fouled out should be allowed to go over to the bench for instruction.

One more change will speed things up. On a two-shot foul, there will be no substitution allowed after the second free throw even if it is made.

I think those changes could save a total of 12-15 minutes per game.

Another time-waster which produces no competitive action or compelling viewing is the habit of every foul shooter strolling around and slapping hands with every teammate after every free throw attempt. A very simple rule change here would cover this problem. No free throw shooter may leave the circle on multiple shots; no players in the marked lane positions may leave that position on multiple shots and no player on the shooting team can enter the circle where the shooter is or reach into the circle. Moreover, the official needs to take the ball and put it at the disposal of the shooter a lot faster than they do it now. There could be another 5 minutes of time savings here in a game where 40 foul shots take place.

I do not think that any of my suggested changes radically alters the games in question or makes a mockery of them. And I do think there are time savings to be harvested from all of them.

Anyone who watched the end of the Lions/Seahawks game on Monday Night Football realizes that the official in the end zone on the “batted ball play” botched the call. The ball should have – by rule – gone to the Lions with a first down on the Seahawks 1-yardline with about a minute to play. That does NOT mean that the Lions would have won the game; please recall what happened to the Seahawks with the ball at the 1-yardline in the final minutes of last year’s Super Bowl game. However, it does harken back to another low-point in the annals of NFL officiating.

Remember back in 2012 when the NFL and the officials could not agree on a new CBA and the league used “replacement refs”. That substitution ploy ended after a blatantly bad call in the end zone on the final play of a game on MNF in Seattle. That play has come to be known as the “Fail Mary” play; I wonder how history will recall and label the one last Monday night. Perhaps, KJ Wright will be known as “Batman” for the rest of his career?

Finally, with the MLB playoffs set to go into full swing, here are two comments from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times that seem appropriate:

“A 108-year-old message in a bottle washed up off the German coast.

“Turns out it was a very prophetic epistle from a title-hungry Cubs fan: ‘Wait’ll this year!’”

And …

“A Roman lead scroll from the year 3 A.D. — unearthed in England three years ago — has a curse written on it, researchers now say.

“Talk about prescient: It mentions 25 cubs and a goat.”

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

Last week, as the good folks in London prepared to experience their first NFL game of the 2015 season, a couple of political figures across the pond expressed their desire to see an NFL franchise housed in London. George Osbourne is the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the UK; the analogous position here in the US would be Secretary of the Treasury. Last week, Osbourne said he hoped the NFL would put a team in London within the next 5 years. After meeting with NFL moguls and team owners last week, he said:

“The real prize, the touchdown for London, would be to get a team based here. I want London to be the global sporting capital.”

There will be 3 regular season games in London this year; the Jets and Dolphins played there last weekend; the next game there will be on October 25 when the Bills and Jags seek to entertain the London crowd; I am sure Rex Ryan is already working on something provocative to say then. I have not been a huge enthusiast of putting a team in London purely for logistical reasons but if I assume those logistical barriers can be overcome/ameliorated sufficiently, here are two things Chancellor Osbourne said last week that I found very positive; first:

“I am supporting the NFL to bring one of their 32 teams to London permanently and will work with them to make this happen.”

The positive part of that comment is that he is talking about bringing an existing team to London and not an expansion team; the NFL does not need to expand. In other remarks, Chancellor Osbourne said that he and his departments were looking at any sorts of barriers that might make putting a team in London more difficult. While one might think that would mean finding money to build a new stadium for an NFL team, other events would indicate that his message was less mercenary and more constructive.

The NFL already has a deal in place to play two game per season at the new stadium already under construction for the Tottenham Hotspurs of the English Premier League. That deal runs for 10 years and is scheduled to start in 2018 when the new stadium is finished. Wembley Stadium has housed NFL games for about a decade now and there are no plans to tear it down. The facilities to house the games would seem to be in place.

I must admit that I get off the train at the point where Chancellor Osbourne says that a study indicated that the 2 NFL games in London last year contributed £32-million (about $48-million) to the local economy. I never believe those studies that set out to figure the value of a sporting event to a city/region nor estimates of future revenues to be generated. They are always hugely over-stated and assume the rosiest of scenarios. However, on balance, Chancellor Osbourne’s statements were positive.

Chiming in was the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, who expressed his “high hopes” for a permanent NFL team in London in the near future. And so, with all of this pomp and circumstance flavored with “high hopes”, I started thinking about how the NFL might accommodate all of this stuff in the context of its existing 32 teams. Remember, it is pretty clear that Roger Goodell and the suits on Park Avenue would love to tap more deeply into the revenue streams that would exist in a city as large as London.

I think the resolution lies in all of the posturing and gesturing that has gone on with regard to putting a team back in LA. There are three teams poised to move to LA because they have “stadium issues” in their current locales. The overriding issue is that each plays in a stadium that not nearly as posh as it might be meaning there are dollars being left on the table by those teams. There is no way on the planet that the NFL is going to put all three of those teams in LA. Moreover, there are two teams in Florida (Jax and Tampa) that are not drawing well in their home venues. Therefore, the NFL has a pool of 3 definite teams one of which could move to London and 2 others that would likely make more money for the owners in London than they do in Florida.

My suggestion here:

Stan Kroenke (Rams’ owner) wants to build a downtown stadium in LA. The league should get behind that move with one condition.

The Spanos family and Mark Davis (owners of the Chargers and Raiders) want to build a stadium they would jointly occupy in Carson, CA. The league should tell all these folks that the league is not behind this plan at all.

The condition for Mr. Kroenke is that his stadium has to be the home for 2 teams in LA until such time as one of the two teams proves to be financially not viable there. He can pick his “partner”; he can be the owner of the stadium and arrange a lease with that “partner” but he will only get league support if he has a “partner”. That puts 2 teams in the LA market in a stadium that an NFL owner wants to build anyway.

The California team above who is not selected as Kroenke’s “partner” would have to make a choice rather quickly. That “outcast” team would have 4 options:

1. Stay where they are

2. Move to St. Louis in the vacated stadium there.

3. Move to London

4. Finalize a deal to move elsewhere in record time.

The beauty of my suggestion is that it scratches the immediate itch of getting at least one team – and preferably two teams – back into the LA market posthaste. Moreover, it gives the “outcast” team some maneuvering room to find a way to upgrade the facility that it plays in. What it does not do is to provide any answers to the attendance problems and the fan apathy that exists for the two Florida teams – unless of course the “outcast” team above moves to St. Louis or stays put. In that case, either of the Florida teams could become the new London Whatevers. Consider that Jacksonville has a population of less than 900,000 folks; Tampa/St. Petersburg has a population of about 800,000; London has a population of about 8.6 million.

Finally, here is a comment by Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald regarding a different sporting event housed in London:

“According to a report, seven London Marathon winners in 12 years recorded suspicious blood scores. Henceforth the London Marathon will be known as ‘The Tour de France Without The Bikes.’ ” .

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

The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in the Ed O’Bannon/NCAA lawsuit last week saying that the NCAA rules which restrict payments to athletes violate antitrust laws but it also found that the District Court Judge was wrong in ruling that athletes could receive $5K in compensation for the NCAA using their likenesses to generate revenues. Normally, at this point, I would try to expand upon that statement; but to be frank, it seems self-contradictory to me. Even worse, people who have written about it have claimed that the Appeals Court decision is a victory for both sides. I do not understand that either.

I barely know how to spell Sherman Anti-Trust Act but it sure does seem to me that the NCAA is a “combination in restraint of trade” and I do recall from my high school history classes that such entities are forbidden by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. I will stand corrected if someone argues that it is not the NCAA that is the “combination” here but it is the various conferences that are amalgams of NCAA members that are the entities doing the “restraining”. So, if indeed the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that NCAA rules are somehow in violation of the anti-trust laws, I do not see how that can be a “victory” for the NCAA. Here is a portion of the ruling from last week:

“The NCAA is not above the antitrust laws, and courts cannot and must not shy away from requiring the NCAA to play by the Sherman Act’s rules. In this case, the NCAA’s rules have been more restrictive than necessary to maintain its tradition of amateurism in support of the college sports market. The Rule of Reason requires that the NCAA permit its schools to provide up to the cost of attendance to their student athletes. It does not require more.”

To me, that sounds as if the court is telling both sides that they lost. The NCAA has a new set of standards to operate under and the athletes get scholarships as their ”compensation” for going to a school and playing sports there. That sounds to me as if neither side got what it wanted out of this matter. In fact, it sounds as if the athletes lost some important ground in terms of seeking payment for their services by colleges:

“…in finding that paying students cash compensation would promote amateurism as effectively as not paying them, the district court ignored that not paying student-athletes is precisely what makes them amateurs.”

Frankly, it is a bit sad to me to learn that it took folks at the appellate level of the Federal Judiciary to figure out that not paying the players is the essence of amateurism…

Surely, this is not over and there will be more to come from this lawsuit. Hopefully, the next ruling will be a tad clearer for those of us who are interested in sports but not steeped in the legal construct of anti-trust law. Here is a summary article from CBSSports.com last week; perhaps it will make things clearer than I can make them here

I am not one who goes to a sporting event and revels in the antics of team mascots. To my mind, the best of the mascots rise to the level of “mildly annoying”. Those comments set the stage for my reaction to a story from last week about Ragnar the Viking. He is the guy who rides his motorcycle out in the stadium during Minnesota Vikings’ games; his costume consists of furry boots and vest, a metal helmet with horns and a huge beard. I guess the word I would use to describe him – never having seen him in person – would be “harmless”. Last year, the Vikings paid Ragnar $1500 per home game ($12K per season) for his services; this year, Ragnar wanted a raise to $20K per game ($160K per season). You need not get out your calculator to realize that is more than a “cost of living increase” in percentage terms. Also, not surprisingly, the Vikings did not accede to his demand and unless there is some kind of negotiated settlement, the Vikings will have to go forth this year without Ragnar and his motorcycle.

At some point, I suspect that someone will write some kind of sappy story about how a certain element of attending Vikings’ games has been missing now that Ragnar is not on the premises. When you read such a story, please recall the numbers here and ask yourself:

If you owned the Vikings, would you pay a mascot $160K a season – and more if the team has a home playoff game or two?

I do not think I need to spell out what my response would be…

Picking up on another story from last week, the Washington Nationals fired Matt Williams as their manager because the team did not come close to living up to expectations for this season. Williams just finished his second year as manager of the team and – interestingly – he was the NL Manager of the Year in 2014. Juxtaposing the two seasons, one might draw different conclusions:

A. Williams got awfully stupid awfully fast in 2015 to go from “Manager of the Year” to “Expendable Scapegoat of the Year” – – or – –

B. “Manager of the Year” is pretty much a meaningless honor despite that significance that the folks who vote on it attach to it.

The entire coaching staff for the team has also been sent packing but the GM who assembled this team of underachievers is still in place and the activist owner of the team has not yet figured out neither the manager nor a single coach ever blew a lead in the 7th or 8th inning to lose a game and that the players were responsible for each and every runner left in scoring position all season long.

With regard to the MLB playoffs:

Take the OVER in games between the Rangers and the Blue Jays.

Take the UNDER in games between the Mets and Dodgers when Kershaw or Grienke pitch for the Dodgers.

I will go with an avian World Series – Blue Jays versus Cardinals.

Finally, here is a comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald regarding baseball records:

“I’m sorry, but there are too many records in Major League Baseball. The other night a game was halted to announce a player just tied the mark for most stolen bases on a Thursday by a guy named Gary.”

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

NBA teams are heading to training camp – – already. In news that cannot be a surprise to anyone who follows the NBA even a little bit, Derrick Rose is injured. In a practice, he took an elbow to the face and suffered a fracture to the orbital bone that will require surgery. I will not pretend to be a surgeon, but any sort of procedure that happens near one’s eye socket cannot be considered “minor”. Obviously, there is no recovery prognosis yet since the surgery is not scheduled until later today.

The Chicago Bulls are obviously a much better team with a healthy Derrick Rose on the floor – even though he has had trouble staying on the floor for much of his career. For this season, it is probably much more important for the Bulls to have him active in training camp than it was before because the Bulls have a new coach this year (Fred Hoiberg) and that means a new system that will nominally be orchestrated by the point guard.

According to several reports I read, if the surgery goes well, Rose might be expected back sometime around 1 December and would play with a mask for a time after that. Allowing him time to get into game condition and to adjust to the mask/injury under game conditions, the Bulls might be ready to run on all cylinders around Christmas. On Christmas Day, the Bulls play at Oklahoma City; that will be the 27th game of the season for the team meaning the season is just about one-third done at that point. Absent a major collapse in November and early December, the Bulls ought to be able to get themselves positioned for a playoff berth. After all, they are in the Eastern Conference…

A couple of other teams start training camp with a variety of “issues” in the air. Out in Sacramento, everyone seems focused on the interpersonal dynamic between Coach George Karl and center DeMarcus Cousins. To be sure, that will be fun to watch because those two men have broadly different views of what it means to be in/play in the NBA. As much fun as it might be to stand back and observe those two folks as they seek to coexist without committing any felonies one upon the other, there is another actor in Sacramento who might get a few solo numbers in the opera there. During the offseason, the Kings signed Rajon Rondo.

Rondo has clashed with coaches and teammates in his prior venues and was basically asked by the Dallas Mavericks to stay away from the team in the midst of the playoffs last year. Not only that, but when it came time to share in the playoff money the team earned, the Mavs stiffed Rondo. Ask yourself these questions:

Just how big a pain-in-the-ass must he have been in Dallas?

What might convince the geniuses who run the Kings that the serenity that encircles the Kings’ franchise might mellow out such a pain-in-the-ass?

The Kings may or may not be a relevant team next year, but they should be fun to stand back and observe…

In another offseason addition that makes me shake my head in wonderment, the NY Knicks signed Robin Lopez for $54M over 4 years. I understand that the Knicks need someone on the court who can and will play defense and that Robin Lopez can and will do that. Nevertheless, there is also some need on the Knicks for a center who might frighten the opposition should the ball ever find its way into his hands in the forecourt – – not a foregone conclusion on that squad. Over his career, Robin Lopez has averaged 8 points and 5 rebounds per game. With that sort of offensive production, Lopez might have to be the second coming of Bill Russell on defense to be worth 4 years and $54M…

The LA Lakers will also be interesting to watch this year even though they are not likely to be a championship caliber team. The Lakers get Kobe Bryant back from injury and it will be interesting to see if he has much gas left in the tank. As interesting as that might be, the Lakers will be interesting for a variety of other reasons:

Nick Young is on the roster. To say that Young has no conscience when the ball is in his hands would be an understatement. Last year with Bryant in the stands, Young sort of had free rein. That is not going to happen this year…

Metta World Peace is on the roster. The Lakers signed him to a 1-year deal. He says that the fact that the Lakers gave him a chance shows that the Lakers are “going for it” this year. I am not sure what he thinks the team is going for…

Roy Hibbert is on the roster. One of the assets Metta World Peace brings to the team is his ability to mentor Hibbert. Excuse me, but Roy Hibbert is 29 years old and has been in the NBA for 7 years. He should be “the mentor” and not “the mentee” by now…

In the last couple of days, the Chicago Bears have done two unusual things. It is not common at all for teams to trade players in the middle of an NFL season; nonetheless, just this week, the Bears have made two separate trades in which they have sent players off their roster elsewhere in exchange for low-round draft picks. DE, Jared Allen went to the Panthers for a conditional 6th round pick and LB, Jon Bostic went to the Pats for another 6th round pick (pending Bostic passing a physical in New England). The Bears have a new coaching staff and a team that is overmatched this year; they do not need a mere rebuilding process; they need to pour a new foundation first and then rebuild the structure of the team. Nonetheless, these trades are interesting for reasons other than their novelty;

1. The Bears’ offense stinks like a cheese factory in July. So, why trade away defensive players?

2. If all the Bears can get for those two players are 6th round picks, what is the point? Here are some recent 6th round acquisitions by the Bears; see if there are any difference-makers here?

David Fales QB San Jose St. 2014
Pat O’Donnell P Miami (Fl) 2014
Cornelius Washington LB Georgia 2013
Isaiah Frey DB Nevada 2012
JT Thomas LB West Virginia 2011
Dan LeFevour QB C. Michigan 2010

Yes, I know that Tom Brady was also a 6th round pick. Nonetheless, 6th round picks are much more likely to be minor players on a team or scrubs who do not make it out of training camp.

By the way, do the Bears still retain the rights to Dan LeFevour? If so, they should give him a call…

Finally, here is some sidebar NBA news courtesy of Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle and Greg Cote of the Miami Herald:

Talk about an athlete making a sacrifice for his team: Rockets guard James Harden agreed not to wear his prized Nike Air Jordans in public after Oct. 1, in deference to his new shoe sponsor, Adidas. Incredible loyalty by a guy who will earn only $200 million for wearing Adidas.

Harden incurred the displeasure of Adidas when he was photographed wearing the Air Jordans while on a date with Khloe Kardashian. Harden’s contract with Khloe stipulates that he won’t date either of the Olsen twins. [Scott Ostler]

And …

“Parting thought: I close by presenting the following without comment because some things are so absurd they require no punch line: Adidas is paying James Harden $200 million to wear its sneakers.” [Greg Cote]

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

I ran across a report enumerating the 100+ Finalists on the list this year for election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and that list caused me to stop and think about the election processes there. Be assured, I am not part of the Committee that will cut that list down the 18 players on whom the Committee will actually vote nor will I be part of the final winnowing process. If I were part of that process, I would probably understand why one of the players on the list this year for the first time was a long-snapper.

I watch a lot of football; I think I understand a bit about the game. I have to say, however, that it never occurred to me until last week to think of long-snappers in terms of a hierarchy or in terms of them being sufficiently outstanding at their craft to be worth Hall of Fame deliberations. This year, Ethan Albright will be part of those deliberations. For those of you who do not recognize the name, Albright played from 1995 through 2010 and holds the record for most consecutive games played by any long-snapper at 224 games.

The outline for the Selection Process – and the identities of the 46 members of the Selection Committee – are here on the Pro Football Hall of Fame website. I find one part of that document particularly interesting:

“Any fan may nominate any qualified person who has been connected with pro football in any capacity simply by writing to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The only restriction is that a player and coach must have last played or coached at least five seasons before he can be considered. For example, a candidate for the 2015 class must have concluded his career not later than the 2009 season.”

I was not aware that I could nominate anyone for the Pro Football Hall of Fame – or that Freddy Fanboy could either. My guess is that you did not know that until now; armed with this knowledge, you may choose to exercise your newly-found empowerment in future years…

A few of the first-timers on the list of 100+ folks under consideration this year include – in addition to Ethan Albright – Brett Favre, Terrell Owens and Darren Sharper. I will find it interesting to see the fate of these players in the voting this year and in future years because their fates will speak directly to the issue of “on-field performance” versus “whole person factors” when it comes to enshrinement in Canton.

Brett Favre: No one can doubt that his performance on the field mandates his inclusion in the Hall of Fame. His late-career “Hamlet portrayals” regarding his retirement might not have sat well with some of the members on the committee and it takes an 80% positive vote of the Committee Members present and voting to get in.

Terrell Owens: Again, no argument regarding his stats… However, he was not always a great teammate nor was he always cooperative with the “ink-stained wretches” who covered the NFL and/or the teams he was on.

Darren Sharper: His 14-year career included 6 All-Pro selections and a place on the All-Decade Team for 2000-2009. However, he has also plead guilty to being a serial rapist in several different states.

Next February, the Super Bowl game will take place in Levi’s Stadium – the new playpen for the SF 49ers – in Santa Clara, CA. Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle had this advice for folks living in the Bay Area:

“Get ready for the Goodell, the bad and the ugly.”

With regard to “the ugly” here, I have not seen any reports yet regarding the artiste who will provide the halftime entertainment for that spectacle. Since I find all of the halftime acts irrelevant at best and lame all of the time, here is a suggestion for a spectacle I would watch:

February 2016 will see the Presidential primary races in full gear in both parties. Invite all of the candidates who dare to speak to the 100 million folks watching for 5 minutes – with the proviso that the mouthbreathers on the field who get access to the field by a lottery process – will all be carrying rotten fruits and veggies.

It is one thing to talk tough about what you will do as President; it would be another to agree to that kind of potential confrontation.

The Niners’ fans who attend games in Levi’s Stadium seem hell-bent to replace Raiders’ fans and Eagles’ fans as the hands-down leaders in the clubhouse when it comes to boorish antisocial behavior. There have been a series of beat-down incidents at Niners games in the past year or so where the recipient of the beating merely committed the sin of wearing a jersey of a team other than the Niners. It has gotten to the point where the Santa Clara City Council is considering stopping the sale of alcohol at halftime of Niners’ games.

I understand that drunken fans in large numbers morph quickly into a mob and mobs do things that individuals – sober or inebriated – would think twice about doing. Nonetheless, stopping beer sales at halftime is a relatively impotent response to the problem. I have never been to a Niners game – in any of their current or previous venues – so what I am about to say here applies to their fans only as an extension of what I have seen elsewhere:

After 3 to 6 hours of tailgating prior to a game – often with beer companies having tents in the area where one can purchase extra beer if one’s own supplies run out – at least 30% of the people who enter the stadium prior to kickoff would not be able to operate a motor vehicle legally. Moreover, what a large fraction of those folks who are already “half-lit or worse” do the minute they clear the ticket scanning site is to get in line to buy more beer – and not just one.

The teams – and the owners of the concession rights – make a lot of money selling beer at NFL games. Cutting fans off at halftime will diminish the flow of a revenue stream but it is not likely to assure sobriety at the end of a game. To make a real difference here, teams and venues would need to add a breathalyzer test to the metal detectors as screening devices to determine who can and who cannot enter the stadium in the first place.

Finally, here is a comment from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times that is appropriate in terms of the upcoming Pro Football Hall of Fame selections:

“One thing to be thankful for: Selfie sticks hadn’t yet been invented when Terrell Owens and Deion Sanders were choreographing their end-zone celebrations.”

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