Category: Daily Rants

Well, at least it was not a phantom injury. Reports this morning say that Manny Pacquiao will undergo surgery for a “significant tear” in his right rotator cuff and will not be able to train for about 9 months. All too often the use of an injury to explain a defeat or a failing sort of rings hollow. However, if someone says he was injured during a competition and then goes under the knife to repair an injury that indeed would affect athletic abilities, one had to acknowledge that the injury was there during the event.

Nevertheless, given the lackluster reviews and commentaries subsequent to the “Fight of the Century”, I am not sure there will be any sort of clamor for a rematch from the public. I will not be surprised if the two camps try to figure a way to put together a rematch in a year or two simply because of the revenue the first fight generated, but I think they will have to sell the rematch whereas the original fight sold itself.

More than a couple of folks have said that American Pharoah’s win in the Kentucky Derby – along with his previous racing credentials – makes him a serious contender to “break the streak” and win the first Triple Crown since Affirmed won it in 1978. A subset of those folks who are on American Pharoah’s bandwagon thinks that this crop of 3-year olds is a strong one and that would make American Pharoah a worthy addition to the list of Triple Crown winners.

I have exactly no idea at the moment if American Pharoah is going to win the Triple Crown nor am I ready to pronounce this year’s 3-year old crop a top shelf commodity. However, one of the outputs from Curmudgeon Central is a dose of reality when faced with unbridled euphoria. Therefore, please consider:

1. American Pharoah got an easy trip in the Derby settling nicely in third and fourth place just off the pace. He had to navigate exactly no traffic jams in that race.

2. American Pharoah ran the mile-and-a-quarter in 2:03 on a fast track. Secretariat ran the Derby in 1:59 2/5. Using handicappers’ metrics, that means American Pharoah would have been 18 lengths behind Secretariat.

3. American Pharoah ran the final quarter mile of that race in 26 2/5 seconds. Handicappers look at horse workouts and gauge a good workout by the mnemonic “eighths in twelve” meaning a good workout is 12 seconds for each eighth of a mile in the workout. American Pharoah’s final quarter for the Derby was more than 2 seconds slower that a good workout time.

4. The fact that a whole bunch of other 3-year olds finished behind American Pharoah means to me that this year’s crop of 3-year olds has a lot to show in the next 7 months before I would anoint it as “great”.

Another area of unbridled euphoria that is out and about in the land has to do with the NFL Draft. In the few days subsequent to the Draft, it is commonplace to read analysts’ grades for the Draft team by team. Since there is no real way to know how all of those players will transition to the NFL about now – and it will be at least 2 years and probably 3 until we do know – these commentaries are a tad silly. However, they are made sillier by the unbridled euphoria that infuses them.

I am going to pick on Mark Maske of the Washington Post here but he is NOT alone. Mark Maske covers the NFL at large for the Post and I think he does a good job at it. However, when it comes to grading the teams after this year’s draft, the worst grade he assigned was a “C-“to two teams. Every other team was “C” or better. Now you can call that unbridled euphoria if you want because certainly a couple of teams are going to come out of this draft with next to nothing to show for their efforts – or – you can attribute this to the Lake Woebegone effect where all the children are slightly above average. Whatever…

Oh, I said that grading drafts two days after the fact is a tad silly. Let me put that on a spectrum for you. It is not nearly as silly creating the “Big Board” for the 2016 NFL Draft right about now. If you go to Google and search for “NFL Draft 2016 mock” you will find more than a couple of pages worth of links to articles available online on the subject. Get a grip…

Former NY Yankee centerfielder, Bernie Williams announced his retirement about a week ago. According to the stats I could find, his last game in MLB was in 2006. I do not know about you, but I sort of figured that he had already retired from the game and took up a musical career with guitar stylings. However, I learned that one does not retire from MLB simply by not playing for almost a decade; one has to make an affirmative declaration of retirement for one to move to that status. So, now it is official…

Here is an item I ran across in Greg Drinnan’s blog, Taking Note/Keeping Score:

“Molly Schuyler, a competitive eater, took all of 20 minutes to down three 72-ounce steaks, three baked potatoes, three shrimp cocktails, three salads and three dinner rolls. . . . ‘Or as they call it in Texas,’ said NBC-TV’s Seth Meyers, ‘a kids meal.’ . . . Did we mention that Schuyler weighs in at 120 pounds? With an appetite like that, I can’t imagine her being a cheap date.”

Finally, having mentioned Bernie Williams’ retirement above, here is a relevant comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“The Yankees announced they would retire the numbers of Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams. Hmm. Who else remembers when only all-time greats got their numbers retired?”

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

In case you had not heard, today is Star Wars Day. So what is a Star Wars junkie to do today in order to solemnly celebrate the day? Well, one suggestion I might have would be to get a tent and some rations and go line up to buy tix to see the new episode that will be coming out soon – – at least if you consider “soon” to be measured in months. You realize that the folks who started this “tradition” could have picked any day on the calendar as Star Wars Day but they chose May 4th. I suggest:

They had no real choice in selecting the date because The Fourth – er, The Force – selected it for them.

May The Force – and the fourth – be with us all…

Everyone has met or worked with someone who is “difficult to get along with”. More than a few people would hang that label on me with plenty of justification. I would suggest, however, that there is a spectrum of “difficult to get along with” that ranges from:

Irritating … to …Pain in the Ass … to … Abject Annoyance … to … Intolerable A$$hole

Now on that spectrum where might you seek to place Rajon Rondo this week? Rondo was acquired by the Dallas Mavericks to fuel a playoff push for the team and hopefully to be part of a deep playoff run this year. Well, the Mavs indeed made the playoffs and Rondo was a starter for the team throughout the regular season and in the early games of the playoffs. And when the Mavs were summarily dismissed from the first round by the Rockets – with Rondo on the bench with what many consider a phantom injury – the team reportedly voted not to give him a playoff share. He played out the season with the team as a starter and he was a starter early in the Houston playoff series – and his teammates voted to stiff him his playoff money. I am thinking that he has to be well into the “Intolerable A$$hole” region of that spectrum…

Javaris Crittenton played basketball for Georgia Tech and had an NBA “career” that had him on the roster for the Lakers, Grizzlies and Wizards. His on-court exploits were not of a scale that most folks could recall any of them but he was the “other guy” involved in the locker-room contretemps with Gilbert Arenas in Washington that culminated in handguns being brought into the team locker room. The details of what happened were never established in a court of law but supposedly Arenas owed Crittenton some money from a card game and did not pay up. Crittenton threatened to bring his gun to the locker room to collect and Arenas’ response was to bring his gun to establish his “alpha-dominance”.

Whatever happened or did not happen led to the career demise for both players. Arenas was deemed to be “over-the-hill” and too injured to continue to play at a high enough level to justify his “issues”; Crittenton never approached a level of play where a team would have even considered “working with him” on these kinds of issues.

In any event, I bring this up today because last week, Javaris Crittenton was sentenced to 23 years in prison for manslaughter. Reports say that he fired a gun at a person who had robbed him a few days prior to the shooting incident but he missed the “robber” and happened to shoot and kill a mother of four children. As he begins his sentence, might I direct your attention to that spectrum I posited above and suggest that you come to your own conclusion as to where Javaris Crittenton might fit into it.

The first round playoff series between the Bulls and the Bucks went 6 games. In the final game, the Bulls “eked out” a win by 54 points. The final score was 120-66. To put that in perspective, only twice in NBA history has a playoff game been decided by more than 54 points.

Minneapolis Lakers beat St. Louis Hawks by 58 points in 1956
Denver Nuggets beat New Orleans Hornets by 58 points in 2009

That’s it; that’s the list.

Once the NFL Draft is completed, teams scramble to sign Undrafted Free Agents most of whom are cannon fodder for training camps and most of whom you will never hear about unless you read the agate type in your local paper on the day after the Undrafted Free Agents are released. Having said that, there was a signing this weekend after the Draft that attracted attention. Nate Boyer was the long-snapper for Texas last year and he got a call from the Seattle Seahawks with the opportunity to go to their training camp to try to make the Seahawks’ roster. Why is Nate Boyer notable?

First of all, he is 34 years old. That is just a tad older than your typical guy coming out of college seeking to play in the NFL

The reason he is “a tad older” is that Boyer was a Green Beret who served in Iraq and in Afghanistan before matriculating at Texas at age 29.

The odds are that he will not make the team but his path to a first-time chance to make an NFL roster is sufficiently out of the ordinary that it is worth noting here. Oh, and as a former Green Beret, he knows something about the concept of “cannon fodder”…

The Mountain West Conference is certainly not the top-dog of football conferences. However, the MWC will consider a conference change at their Spring Conference Meeting this year that might put them in a leadership role. The MWC will consider having their football conference championship game be between the two best teams in the conference and not necessarily between the champion of Division 1 and the champion of Division 2. Slow down, Charlie Brown; that is a lot better than “not a bad idea”. Yes, it could create controversy – albeit controversy related to the MWC is hardly a big deal – but it is an idea that the Big Boy Conferences might want to have in their bylaws as a contingency for certain years.

Kudos to the Mountain West Conference for innovative thinking…

Finally, I have been called to jury duty twice and have been empaneled on three different juries to hear cases. From that perspective, I agree completely with this assessment by Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle:

“A jury I don’t want to be on, if the case ever goes to trial: No charges filed so far, but a woman has accused former 49er Ray McDonald of possible sexual assault. His attorney says McDonald has ‘video evidence of consensual sex over a two-day period of time.’ “

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

Well, that fell somewhere between anticlimactic and lame. After months of hype and analysis predicting big trades for teams to move up to the top of the draft, exactly nothing of that nature happened. I am sure you can find someone somewhere who has issued grades for the first round picks; you will not find that here because putting a grade on a selection often takes a couple of years. I will point to a couple of the selections that I think were interesting:

At #4, the Raiders took Amari Cooper, WR, Alabama. Please recall from my pre-draft analysis that I said I thought only injury would prevent Cooper from succeeding in the NFL. I still believe that. Moreover, I also recognize that the Raiders need help at WR. However, the Raiders have a bigger need for an upgrade and that bigger need is their OL. Amari Cooper will not catch passes from a QB who is not vertical.

At #7, the Bears took Kevin White, WR, West Virginia. The Bears absolutely had to get a WR to pair with Alshon Jeffrey and they got a good one here. Jay Cutler has to be a happy camper this morning.

At #10, the Rams took Todd Gurley, RB, Georgia. Obviously, the team doctors in St. Louis pronounced his knee ready to go.

At #32, the Patriots took Malcom Brown, DT, Texas. In my pre-draft analysis, I said he reminded me of Vince Wilfork. Well, Wilfork signed with the Texans as a free agent in the offseason, so this might be an extremely fortuitous pick by the Pats.

The following “fact-not-worth-remembering” comes from a report on the draft on CBSSports.com this morning:

“Detroit grabbed guard Laken Tomlinson with the No. 28 pick, making him the first Blue Devils player to get selected in the first 32 choices since linebacker Mike Junkin went No. 5 overall to Cleveland nearly three decades years ago.”

Many people think that a Game 7 in a Stanley Cup playoff series is one of the most exciting events in sports. Two nights ago, the Red Wings were in Tampa to play the Lightening in a seventh game and things got hot – so to speak. Just before the game began, fans in Tampa were passing a large team flag around the arena and a woman from Detroit took offense. She tried to set the flag on fire – and succeeded in producing a “small burn” to the flag. She was arrested and charged with “first degree arson of an occupied structure”. I am not going to pretend to know Florida’s criminal laws, but that sounds extremely serious to me.

Billy Donovan apparently is heading west to take over as the head coach of the Oklahoma City Thunder. I say “apparently” because about 10 years ago, Donovan signed on to be the head coach of the Orlando Magic and less than 48 hours later told the team he changed his mind and returned to the University of Florida. Donovan has been at Florida for 19 years – not counting that 24-hour defection – and has been very successful there winning two national championships. His program has produced some fine NBA players including Joaquim Noah and Al Horford.

I believe it was Hubie Brown who defined the challenge for Donovan as he takes over the OKC roster headed by Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook:

Your two best players have to agree to be coached by you. [That is a paraphrase not a quote].

Yesterday, I mentioned some of the horses running in tomorrow’s Kentucky Derby. This is a two minute event – give or take a couple of seconds – but the TV mavens at NBC who have the rights to the Derby are going to put on 15.5 hours of coverage. I am not making this up and just to give you an idea of how big a reach it is to find 15.5 hours of things to yak about relative to a 2-minute horse race, consider this:

On the Today Show, Al Roker will interview a milliner on the subject of Kentucky Derby hat fashions. But that is not all… Roker will be joined in the enterprise by NBC’s “fashion and lifestyle experts”, Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir. Much as I complain about the 6-hour pre-game nonsense leading up to the Super Bowl, I do have to admit that they have not sunk to the depths of using “fashion and lifestyle” correspondents – – yet.

The Weather Channel (owned by NBC) will of course focus coverage on the weather forecast for Louisville for the next two days.

Memo for Weather Channel Folks: If your forecast is accurate, you can report it once in about 45 seconds and then run it as a crawl on the bottom of the screen for the next two days. After you make a forecast, the only interesting news is if you change the forecast – meaning your first one was wrong.

MSNBC will provide live interview segments on its various programs. I cannot wait to hear Rev. Al Sharpton’s insightful questions regarding the race. After all, he is an expert on all matters involving “race”. Right?

And the list of irrelevant interviews and picks by NBC hosts/celebrities goes on and on…

Here is my advice:

Post Time for the race is 6:24 PM according to the Washington Post.

The race will NOT start before Post Time so you can tune in at 6:15, settle into a comfortable seat with a clear view of the TV screen and watch ”the most exciting two minutes in sports” without having to endure 15.5 hours of nonsensical and irrelevant coverage.

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

“The World Chess Championship was televised in a number of countries. Who’s this for? People who find watching curling too nerve-racking?”

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

Last night, ESPN reported that the Cleveland Browns had made an offer to the Tennessee Titans in order for the Browns to acquire the overall #2 pick in the draft tonight. There is nothing particularly notable in that; plenty of teams might be angling to get that pick. However, what ESPN reported was that if the Browns got the overall #2 pick, they were going to draft Marcus Mariota. When I heard that, I thought that Mariota must have gone into a blue funk hearing the news. Here’s why…

Consider that the Cleveland Browns as we know them today began in 1999. Since they had the overall #1 pick in the draft that year as an expansion franchise, the Browns have taken a bunch of QBs in the draft and none of them have turned out to be anything more than journeymen. In fact, a large number of the QBs that the Browns took cannot play dead in a John Wayne movie. I may have missed a selection; my “research” here was done hastily, but here is the list I compiled:

1999 Tim Couch — First round — Overall #1
2000 Spergon Wynn — Sixth round — Overall #183
2004 Luke McCown — Fourth round — Overall #106
2005 Charlie Frye — Third round — Overall #67
2007 Brady Quinn — First round — Overall #22
2010 Colt McCoy – – Third round – Overall #85
2012 Brandon Weeden – – First Round – – Overall #22
2014 Johnny Manziel – – First Round – – Overall #22

Since 1999, there have been 16 NFL Drafts. In those drafts, the Browns have taken a QB eight times; of those eight selections, four have been first round picks. If Marcus Mariota looks at that history and realizes that he might have his name entered onto that list, it ought to give him night sweats.

Three years ago at draft time, the Miami Dolphins traded up to the #3 slot in the draft to select DE/OLB Dion Jordan. Earlier this week, we learned that Jordan will be suspended for the entire 2015 season for running afoul of the substance abuse policy. I believe we can make it official now; Dion Jordan was not worth trading up for.

In 2 seasons, Jordan has 3 sacks and 2 drug suspensions. That is an ominous start to an NFL career – if in fact it is not the sum total of his entire NFL career.

There seems to be about as much hype and hoopla surrounding the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight as there is for some pro ‘rassling extravaganza. About a week ago, Mayweather proclaimed that he is the greatest fighter in history specifically saying, “I am greater than Ali.” For some reason that I do not understand, George Foreman chimed in saying “I agree with Mayweather.” Of course, Ali simply said, “I’m the greatest.”

None of that amounts to a scintilla of squirrel stool but I would like to point out to all of those fighters a simple fact:

Rocky Marciano retired as the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world beating all 49 men who stood in front of him.

Rocky is on the other side of the grass at the moment so he cannot offer his opinion on this matter directly…

The Nevada State Gaming Control Board released figures for March indicating that sportsbooks in Nevada handled $375.5M in wagers on basketball. That number is up from last year’s $343.5M and represents a 9.3% increase. If you assume that the handle for NBA games in March of each year is relatively constant, the difference would have to be wagering on March Madness. People who follow the gaming industry say that 70% of the wagering on basketball in Nevada goes to NCAA Tournament games; if they are correct, that would mean that almost $263M went through the windows in March on college basketball games. And please recall that the Final Four games did not happen until April…

This increase in wagering happens to coincide with record breaking TV ratings for the tournament games this year. Adam Silver seems to recognize that there is some causation here and so does Rob Manfred; Mark Emmert continues to do his Marcel Marceau imitation on this matter.

For the final game, the ratings say it was the most watched game since 1997 (Kentucky vs. Arizona). The total viewing audience was 28.26 million folks.

Saturday will see the Kentucky Derby happen. As usual there will be 20 horses in the field which is about 6 too many. More than about any other US race, the outcome of the Derby is often decided by which horse best avoids traffic congestion. Horses to watch include:

Carpe Diem. Post position 2. Morning Line 8-1. He has 4 wins in 5 starts and has the best trainer/jockey combination in racing going for him.

Dortmund. Post position 8. Morning Line 3-1. He has never lost and he ran a huge race in the Santa Anita Derby.

International Star. Post position 12. Morning Line 20-1. If you like your horse to close ground late, he is one to consider.

Frosted. Post Position 15. Morning Line 15-1. Ran a very good race in the Wood Memorial.

American Pharaoh. Post 18. Morning Line 5-2. He has 4 straight wins but I am leery of a favorite from the 18 post in a field like this.

Finally, Dwight Perry had this note in the Seattle Times recently:

“

The 76,976 fans at WrestleMania XXXI in San Francisco broke the Levi’s Stadium record for WiFi usage — 4.5 terabytes of data.

“On the downside, local doctors report a sudden rash of cauliflower-thumb complaints.”

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

The Los Angeles Angels basically gave Josh Hamilton back to the Rangers to get him out of town. The Angels will pay the vast majority of the salary remaining on Hamilton’s $125M contract and might get the infamous “player who already has a name but who will be identified later”. This transaction has engendered a huge reaction among commentators – some of which has been way over the top to the point where one columnist said something along the lines that when – not if – Hamilton ever killed himself in a drug-involved incident, the columnist hoped he would die alone and not take anyone else with him. Sorry, folks; that is way out of bounds…

I would observe, however, that this is probably a good time to be a columnist in Dallas or Fort Worth. There is plenty of room for multiple columnists to discuss the Hamilton situation with the Rangers from several vantage points. But the fun only starts there:

The Greg Hardy suspension for 10 games provides the opportunity to comment on his presence with the Cowboys from a football perspective, from the perspective of the NFL’s evolving position on domestic violence and from the perspective of rehabilitation and atonement of an athlete. There is mileage to be had there.

Up to the point where it becomes impossible for the Cowboys to trade for Adrian Peterson, he can be the focus of the same kinds of perspective columns that Hardy provides. Only the names need be changed to protect the innocent… [/Dragnet].

In anticipation of Hamilton’s return to North Texas, Gerry Fraley of the Dallas Morning News compiled stats that say history is not on Hamilton’s side when it comes to regaining the glory he had in his first stay in Texas. Fraley looked at 8 baseball stars who went back to where they had prior glory late in their careers and found that most did not come close to rekindling it. Fraley’s list was:

Bert Blyleven’s return to the Twins
Gary Carter’s return to the Expos
Roger Clemens return to the Yankees
Rickey Henderson’s return to Oakland
Reggie Jackson’s return to Oakland
Andy Pettite’s return to the Yankees
Pete Rose’s return to the Reds
Tom Seaver’s return to the Mets

Blyleven was a success with the Twins and Pettite pitched well for the Yankees in return engagements; for the other players – all of them great players – they performed very poorly going “back to where it all began.” Granted, Hamilton is younger than the players on that list; but on the other hand, he is bearing burden they did not.

Oh, since I mentioned the possibility of Adrian Peterson going to the Cowboys above, I ran across a little note that said Herschel Walker thinks that the Vikings ought to trade Peterson and that the Cowboys were the most logical place for the team to make a deal. Obviously, Walker is entitled to his opinion. However consider the history here:

If there is anyone on the planet who ought not to be offering “trade advice” to the Vikings involving a running back and the Dallas Cowboys, it would have to be Herschel Walker.

Sometimes it is difficult to find the right adjective to describe a certain event. I am sitting here in Curmudgeon Central trying to come up with something that goes beyond “inconsequential” or “trivial” or “immaterial” or “exiguous”. I am looking for a word that will describe the NFL’s sanction of the NY Jets after the league decided that the Jets – in the person of owner, Woody Johnson – did in fact tamper with Darrelle Revis while Revis was under contract with the Patriots. The penalty for the Jets is:

A fine of $100K.

Let me be clear; what Woody Johnson did was minimal. Nevertheless, the NFL investigated and found that Johnson’s minimal action indeed violated whatever the league has defined for itself to be “tampering”. Presumably, the NFL did not put that rule in place just for the Hell of it. Ergo, when a team – or a coach or an owner – violates the rule, there needs to be a penalty associated with it that will make someone else think twice before violating the rule in the future. That is why there are penalties in the first place.

The Jets committed – potentially – $70M to Revis over the next 5 seasons. Woody Johnson is part of the Johnson family who people know as Johnson & Johnson – the pharmaceutical firm. Estimates of the family fortune are in the range of $13B; I have no idea what Woody Johnson’s share of that $13B might be, but I am confident in making this statement:

$100K is a trifling amount of money to him – as it would be to every other NFL owner.

I am not sufficiently facile with English to find the right descriptor here but the message the NFL sent is loud and clear. We have a tampering rule but if you violate it, nothing bad is going to happen to you.

Finally, Brad Rock of the Deseret News found something positive to say about Reds’ manager, Bryan Price, and his 5-minute profanity-laced tirade:

“Cincinnati Reds manager Bryan Price used the same vulgarity 77 times during a 5 ½-minute rant at the media.

“On the bright side, not once did he use the equally obnoxious phrase ‘moving forward.’ ”

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

With the NFL Draft careening towards us with all of the speculation on who will take which of the top 2 QBs in the first round, there is something you need to go and read in its entirety. Dan Daly, formerly with the Washington Times, has done some extensive research on where QBs who ultimately wound up in the Hall of Fame went in the draft. Here is something that might scare the bejeebers out of the guys in Tampa and Tennessee and other teams with really high draft picks:

More than 80% of the QBs who proved to be Hall of Fame quality were not the first QB taken in the draft in the year they were eligible.

I cannot do a synopsis here that does justice to Daly’s research and presentation and so I will urge you to follow this link and read this entry in its entirety at ProFootballDaly.com.

Since I mentioned the upcoming draft and the eligible QBs this year, you probably read or saw that Jameis Winston told Jim Harbaugh on the ESPN feature, Draft Academy, a new story about the infamous crab legs incident. Basically, Winston said that he did not shoplift the crab legs as one might conclude from watching the security videos in the store because the crab legs were given to him by a store employee as a “hook-up”. Translated into English, Winston got some free crab legs from the supermarket because he was the star QB on the defending national champion football team in town. It was no big deal; that is why he took no action to conceal the fact that he was walking out of the door with the crab legs bypassing the cash register.

This was treated as a revelation for about a day or so and then it seems to have faded into oblivion. Naturally, I look at this differently than most other commentators.

1. Only about 2 weeks to go before the draft and Jameis Winston changes his story about what happened that night? And that is supposed to make me feel confident that his “off-the-field-issues” are nothing more than “growing up pains”? Here is what this “new story” demonstrates rather clearly:

Either he is lying now or he was lying before regarding the crab legs incident.

2. If the current story is the truth, where are the NCAA enforcement hounds? Jameis Winston just declared that he got free foodstuffs from a local supermarket and that it was no big deal that it happened. That is the seafood equivalent of a booster handing him money under the table. One would think that the NCAA would be swarming all over this matter; an athlete just admitted getting benefits that are not available to the student body at large.

How long has this been going on?

Are similar “bennies” available to other athletes?

How come none of the coaches know about this?

What did everyone tell the Florida State ‘investigators” about this matter back when it first surfaced?

Bob Molinaro took this matter in a totally different direction in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot recently:

“Good eats: I’m not sure what position to take on the latest twist in the Jameis Winston crab legs saga, except to surmise that it’s created more free advertising for crab legs.”

With all of the focus on the Mayweather/Pacquaio fight next weekend, one might surmise that boxing might be making a comeback. I think not. The moribund state of the sport was on display last weekend when the heavyweight champion of the world, Wladimir Klitschko, defended his title against an undefeated challenger named Bryant Jennings in Madison Square Garden. There was a time when such a happening would have been the single focal point for the sports world; I will suggest here that less than 5% of the people you might encounter on the street this week are even aware that the fight happened let alone who participated, where it happened and what was the outcome.

People today may not realize that at one time the three top assignments for sportswriters working at newspapers were – in alphabetical order:

Baseball
Boxing
Horseracing

Some truly great writers covered boxing including Ring Lardner, AJ Liebling (my personal favorite), Stan Hochman, Bert Sugar, Dave Anderson, William Gildea and Jimmy Breslin. Not intending to disparage current boxing coverage, the great writers of today gravitate to different beats and to different issues than the world of boxing. And that is why you can have a heavyweight championship fight in Madison Square Garden in an environment where the vast majority of sports fans just do not care. Sad…

According to Forbes, total attendance at MLB games in 2014 was 73.7M fans. Barring some kind of catastrophe, total attendance in 2015 will be very close to this number. According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council – yes, there is such a thing; Google is your friend – fans this year will consume 23M hot dogs and sausages at ballparks this year. Given the way MLB parks have added dining options to include pizza and burgers and sushi and nachos, I am surprised to see that teams can expect to sell a hot dog/sausage to about one in three fans.

Finally, Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times had a comment regarding the current WBC heavyweight champion of the world:

“Deontay Wilder, who won the WBC heavyweight boxing title by unanimous decision, is a former waiter at IHOP.

“No wonder the judges didn’t waffle.”

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

I remember studying vocabulary lists in preparation for the SATs many years ago and running across the word, sinecure. A sinecure is a job that provides earnings but requires little or no work or effort. I recall thinking in my youth that a sinecure would be a great career because it would put food on the table and still allow time to do fun things like go to see baseball games several times a week. I had a great career – but not because it was a sinecure. In fact, I now think I would have been bored to tears with a sinecure.

Nonetheless, if one were to go looking today for a position of that ilk, might I suggest that one seek to be on a baseball Blue Ribbon Committee or alternatively, to be assigned to do an investigation on behalf of the NFL. There may be some work involved there, but the “pace” of the job is extraordinarily leisurely.

MLB set up a Blue Ribbon Committee to figure out how to get the Oakland A’s a new stadium while not having the SF Giants get their knickers in a knot. I do not have the exact date for the committee’s formation, but I will say it was about 5 years ago and there have still been no recommendations – let alone actions. This is not an easy problem to resolve; I will stipulate that. However, in 5 years one might think that there could be some kind of movement toward a resolution.

MLB also set up a special investigation to determine if the Chicago Cubs tampered with Joe Maddon while he was still under contract with the Tampa Bay Rays. My recollection of this investigative endeavor is that it began before Thanksgiving of last year meaning it has been ongoing for at least 5 months now. Resolving territorial issues between teams while simultaneously considering the locale for a new stadium is a thorny issue; determining “tampering” vs. “non-tampering” vs. “not enough evidence to make either determination” is not nearly so thorny.

Everyone must recall “Deflategate” because it was the biggest story of the NFL playoffs running up to the Super Bowl. You may or may not recall that the NFL assigned Ted Wells to do an investigation to determine why the footballs used in the Colts/Pats playoff game had an internal pressure that was outside the limits prescribed by the rules. The important distinction that has to be made is this one:

Were the balls “underinflated” or were they “deflated”? Underinflated can happen simply because of human error; deflated involves a conscious and determined act.

Well, that investigation is still ongoing 3 months later and Colts’ owner Jim Irsay says he is not surprised at the time this has taken and that he fully expects the investigation to go on for several more weeks.

In my retirement, I could always use a gig that will shore up my IRA but I would really like to still have the time to watch games and write these rants. Therefore, I will announce here that I am available at an amazingly low rate of pay to participate on any Blue Ribbon Committee or investigation of alleged wrongdoing in one of the pro sports leagues so long as the pace of my committee/investigation parallels the ones described here. At the rate they are going, someone will find out what happened to Judge Crater before all the work is done here.

Brittney Griner, the star center for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, was arrested over the weekend in Arizona. According to reports Griner and another WNBA player, Glory Johnson of the Tulsa Shock were arrested based on an incident involving assault and disorderly conduct. As I skimmed the lead paragraph of the article, my first thought was that this was indeed unladylike and that I should make a comment about how Miss Manners might be extremely miffed at such behavior. However, I also noticed in the midst of a paragraph that Glory Johnson was identified as Brittney Griner’s fiancée. Well, that changes things a bit…

If these two ladies can manage to put this incident behind them and resume their relationship and ultimately marry one another, it will have to be the first time that a married couple will be playing in the same professional team sports league in the US. Now, allow me to offer up these words of wisdom to this young couple with the intention that they may indeed let this incident be a mere speed bump on the road of life. Here is what comedienne, Rita Rudner had to say about marriage:

“I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”

The MLB All-Star Game will be in Cincy this summer and Commissioner Rob Manfred announced that Pete Rose will be part of the ceremonies surrounding the game. The Reds’ president/CEO, Bob Castellini, will work with the Commish to figure out just how Rose will be involved in the event. Allow me to suggest to Messrs. Manfred and Castellini one of the first things they need to do as they set out to determine how Pete Rose might be part of the All-star Game:

Do not give Jim Gray a press credential. Do not let him get near Pete Rose with a camera and a microphone.

Just don’t…

Finally, Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald had this observation over the weekend:

“This week, Pete Rose returned to baseball and Tim Tebow returned to football. You just know Brett Favre is sitting by the phone.”

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

Adam Kilgore wrote a lengthy article in the Washington Post recently describing the daily sports fantasy websites. This is a long-form piece but if you are interested in this subject, the article is well researched and well written. You can find it here.

The focus of the article is that the two main players in this arena – FanDuel and DraftKings – are exploiting a loophole in the Federal law that bars Internet gambling. The fact that there are loopholes in laws is not surprising or interesting to me; the fact that there are people smart enough to find and exploit said loopholes is not surprising or particularly interesting to me; the fact that the Feds who thought it was so important to pass a law to ban something for the public good cannot move quickly to close such obvious loopholes is not surprising or interesting to me. Here are some of the points made in this article that I find very interesting:

More than 3 million people play fantasy sports using these two web-based companies on a daily basis.

An estimated 41 million people play fantasy sports in venues other than these two daily fantasy sites.

Consider this paragraph from the article:

“On a typical NFL Sunday, FanDuel’s most popular game awards a $500,000 first prize to the winner of a massive pool with a $25 entry fee. Rather than simply hosting leagues for users, daily fantasy sports serve as an exchange. Players enter contests and win prizes for the best entries, and the Web site keeps a cut.”

Now, can you explain to me how this event is not equivalent to playing online poker or why playing fantasy sports on this different from betting on NFL sporting events?

MLB bought a financial stake in DraftKings two years ago. The NBA has a “partnership” with FanDuel. Since the two sites serve as an exchange in the sense that they take a small cut from every entry fee (call it a wager to be more accurate), that means that two of the major sports enterprises in the US are deriving revenue from wagering on their games along with other games.

MLB specifically lobbied in favor of the insert in the bill that created this loophole. The NBA, NFL, NHL and the NCAA all lobbied to pass the bill that created this loophole. In essence, all of these organizations supported a law that specifically makes a form of gambling on sporting events legal.

FanDuel has a “partnership” with the Orlando Magic in addition to its “partnership” with the NBA.

Even though I have exactly zero interest in fantasy sports – the season long variety or the daily variety – I find the topic interesting because of the mental gymnastics one has to go through when dealing with this topic. For example, they say fantasy sports betting is different from poker betting because in fantasy sports everyone starts with the same set of resources but in poker each player is dealt a different hand. Sounds good until you realize that is merely true if you set the level of your perspective. In poker, everyone sits down at the table with a stake (their wager) and the same deck of cards that will be used for the entire duration of the poker event. Once you resolve that dichotomy, you will know exactly how many angels dance on the head of a pin.

Another distinction is that fantasy betting is not sports betting because it does not depend on the outcome of any specific game. Again, that is literally correct but if you draft a team for a day in football and every player on your fantasy team is involved in a game where that player’s team wins 50-0, you stand a whole lot better chance of winning than losing.

My takeaway is that the pro sports leagues are already involved in gambling and some of that gambling is on games that their league puts on. Their players may indeed be playing fantasy sports and if that is not an apparent conflict of interest – a step below actual game fixing to be sure – then I guess I do not understand what a conflict of interest might be. To date, the NCAA is not part of this unholy cabal – but once the revenue streams are publicly known as they will be since these companies are seeking expansion funding, I am sure the NCAA will want to “dip its beak” so to speak. That will provide some fascinating mental gymnastics…

I mentioned recently that the latter-day Rosie Ruiz had been disqualified from the St Louis marathon. Greg Cote of the Miami Herald took that fact and juxtaposed it with some other information to come up with this:

“The St. Louis Marathon disqualified women’s winner Kendall Schler after determining she crossed the finish line but never ran the race. There also are now suspicions about the man who claims to have won, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams.”

Finally, here is one more observation from Greg Cote that is worth your attention. The NBA and the NBPA have agreed on the protocols and procedures by which they will test players for human growth hormone and testing is slated to begin over the summer. That annou8ncment produced this remark:

“There is something funny to me about the NBA, whose typical employee is freakishly tall, testing for human growth hormone. It’s like the International Sumo Federation testing for body fat.”

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

Sometimes you have to just shake your head in amazement and wonder if indeed the fall of civilization as we know it is imminent. Recent events in the sporting world might bring such puzzlement to the front of one’s awareness. Consider:

The NFL schedule was announced to the sheep – er, the public – last night. NFL Network had a 3-hour special on it. Ever since the last day of last season, anyone who understood the NFL scheduling algorithm knew which teams would play which other teams next year. What we got yesterday was when and where each game would be played. If such a revelation is worth 3 hours of your life, you might want to consider assisted suicide; there is not a lot of hope for you.

Rosie Ruiz is alive and well and racing in St. Louis – or at least a latter-day cheat who pulled the same kind of stunt as Rosie Ruiz. A runner in the GO! St. Louis marathon finished third last year and won the race this year. Not so unusual except that this runner did not run the full 26.2 miles either last year or this year.

Memo to Marathon Cheaters Everywhere: If you want “marathon cred” you can get it by finishing third and fourth in races. They will scrutinize winners a whole lot more than third or fourth place finishers. Don’t get greedy and – while you are at it – don’t be a cheating a$$hole.

Jay Feely felt it necessary to declare publicly in front of people who recorded his public statement that Tim Tebow is the worst QB he ever saw. I may be kind here for a moment and point out that Jay Feely never had to watch Jay Feely play QB and that might limit the scope of his knowledge… My problem with the reporting on this story is simple. After his pronouncement, why did no one ask him this simple question:

Who asked you and who gives a fig what you think?

Given all the hoopla regarding the potential move of the Chargers and the Raiders to a new stadium in Carson CA, I have a friend who lives in So. Cal. and he sent me an e-mail with his views on the subject. Here are the salient points:

“I’ve never been to the stadium in Oakland but I’ve read about sewage plugs there enough times to get why the Raiders want out … I’ve been to Qualcomm as recently as 2012 to see the Chargers and it is not a bright and upbeat place. However, both those teams must really want out of where they are if they are seriously considering a move to Carson which is a dump.

“PS Ironically, the last time I was at Qualcomm Stadium it was to see the Chargers and Raiders.”

I do not know that I have ever been to Carson CA; in a former stage of my professional career, I did spend a lot of time in So. Cal., but Carson rings no bells in my memory. Therefore, I cannot really confirm or contradict my friend’s assessment of the town. I can understand why any team might want to leave Oakland and the sewage-challenged environment of the stadium there; while I have no first-hand experience at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, there are too many folks who say it has seen its better days and needs to have a wrecking ball come for a visit to wax poetically about its glories. However, what if my friend is correct and the Carson truly is “a dump”? Moving from Oakland to “a dump” is what The Peter Principle defines as a “lateral arabesque”; moving from San Diego to “a dump” is a giant step backward.

Speaking obliquely of the Raiders, they signed Michael Crabtree to a 1-year deal worth anywhere between $3-5M depending on incentives attained. If anyone asked Richard Sherman what he thought of the contract, I did not see it. Moving “across the bay” so to speak, seems to indicate a couple of things:

1. Crabtree did not think that he would be a featured option in the Niners’ offense under Jim Tomsula.

2. Crabtree thinks Derek Carr is at least as good – if not better – than Colin Kaepernick when it comes to getting the ball to WRs down the field.

3. The Raiders do not have to play the Seahawks twice next year and that is a plus to Crabtree.

Here is my bottom-line on that Bay Area kerfuffle:

I doubt that either team will make the playoffs. Therefore, this “transaction” is about as important as the breakfast menu on the Titanic for “tomorrow morning”…

Finally, if you want to be shocked an amazed by the abject asininity of an athlete in the midst of completion, please consider these words from Brad Rock of the Deseret News:

“Middleweight fighter Marvin Jones’ fight in Florida was delayed momentarily when his cell phone fell out of his trunks.

“He was later kayoed by Ramon Luis Nicholas — proving beyond doubt Jones doesn’t carry a smart phone.”

Seriously, the guy was carrying his cell phone in the midst of a boxing match. Many is the time that a pro ‘rassler has won a match by using a “foreign object” to his advantage but two things need consideration here:

1. This is boxing and not pro ‘rassling.

2. How might he have “taken a call” or “texted a friend” or “posted a selfie to a social media site” while wearing boxing – damned – gloves?

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

I wonder if Adam Silver is intentionally working to make himself the obverse of his predecessor, David Stern, or if they are just wired differently. David Stern seemed always in dire need to demonstrate that he was the smartest person not only in the room but in the entire zip code. Silver is clearly smarter than the average bear (H/T to Hanna- Barbera), but he seems to be able to blend his intellect with the reality of common sense. David Stern could not allow himself to demonstrate common sense because if he did, that might detract from the hugeness of his intellect.

Recently, Adam Silver went on the Boomer and Carton show on WFAN in NY. I am anything but a fan of Boomer and Carton; I doubt that I have ever been able to stay tuned to their program for more than 20 minutes in a stretch. Nonetheless, Boomer and Carton spoke with the NBA Commish on the topic of gambling on NBA games – and other pro sporting events and elicited these remarks:

After speaking about international soccer and European basketball where gambling is widely available and practiced, Silver said:

“Because they have all that data, they’re able to monitor [game fixing activities] … And if there’s any irregular activity whatsoever, it’s like tracking insider trading on the New York Stock Exchange. If there’s a blip, if there’s unusual activity, they know to investigate. So first the issue for us is if all this betting is going to go on anyway, we should be able to monitor it. And then, No. 2, if all this betting activity is going to go on anyway, make it legal.”

Later, the Commish said:

“It’s good for business, I don’t want to hide from that. Putting aside whether or not we’re actually actively involved in any of the betting, it creates more engagement. We all know as fans if you have, even like a gentleman’s bet or a $5 bet with your friend on a game, all of a sudden you’re a lot more interested.”

What Silver did not say is that the NBA is indeed in a financial arrangement with one of those fantasy sports sites that offers “one-day games” and so the NBA is already directly involved with – and benefiting from – gambling activities involving NBA players and NBA games.

The other recent Adam Silver event that demonstrated that he is cut from different cloth than his predecessor was his press conference after the annual NBA board of Governors’ Meeting last week. He simply presented the outcome of the meeting in simple terms and admitted that there were some issues for which there is no obvious workable solution at the moment. I have trouble imagining David Stern verbalizing in that way. Here are two conundrums that Adam Silver and the NBA mavens have not yet figured a way out of:

1. Tanking: The lottery was instituted to prevent tanking because 30+ years ago it was being done in spades to acquire the guaranteed #1 pick in the Draft. The problem now is that teams are about to be flush with cash and with oodles of salary cap headroom meaning that free agency will be a goat rodeo over the next year or two. Here is what Commish Silver had to say:

“So what the basketball people pointed out – and they’re right – is that of course the draft lottery and the draft are just one component of team building. There’s also free agency and then there are trades, and that it’s very difficult then to look at that one aspect in the abstract. So my sense where we were coming out is that there’s still a sense that we need to make a change, but until we see what the team behavior is going to be with all this new cap room, we should hold it and wait and then look holistically at the whole system. This one again on the draft lottery, we agreed to continue looking at it, but it seems highly unlikely at this point that we’re going to make a change for next season.”

Let me translate that for you:

We haven’t the faintest idea how to attack this problem now and the cap room changes only make it more complicated. So, we are kicking the can down the road…

2. Playoff entrants and seeding: Look at the Eastern teams in the playoffs vis-à-vis the teams who just missed the playoffs in the West. If you do not see the fundamental issue here by looking at those records, you are clearly a fan of the Brooklyn Nets. However, there is no agreement on how to fix this and here is how the Commish explained it:

“When we presented all the data to the teams, what becomes clear is that there is no obvious solution because we play, for example, an unbalanced schedule in terms of you play your division members more than you do other divisions; you play in your conference more than you do the other conference. And I’ve said in the past, one of the competing issues is do we reduce the number of back-to-backs, reducing the amount travel for our teams. Of course, if we have a fully balanced schedule, that will increase the amount of travel.”

Let me translate that for you:

Teams in the East like the idea of playing other lesser competition in the East Conference more than teams in the West and have figured out that travel times to the West Coast are much longer than they are in the I-95 corridor and are using that as an argument to leave things as they are. Oh, and since changes to alignment or playoff eligibility require an affirmative vote of 2/3 of the teams, the chances of getting a bunch of Eastern teams to sign up for such change are zero. So we are punting…

Twins’ pitcher Ervin Santana is one of several MLB players on lengthy suspension for failing a PED drug test. Santana tested positive for Stanozolol which is the same thing that cost Ben Johnson his Olympic Gold Medals all the way back in 1988. Folks, this is hardly one of those so-called “designer steroids”… The interesting part of this story is that when Santana addressed his suspension, he said that he could not pinpoint how this stuff found its way into his bloodstream.

Memo to Ervin Santana: When discussing the origins of how you wound up being suspended from MLB for failing a steroid test, you might not want to use the word, “pinpoint”. Just saying…

Finally, a cogent observation from Scott Ostler in the SF Chronicle:

“Tough break for the San Jose Earthquakes with one-named midfielder, Innocent, being suspended one game for throwing an elbow.

“It’s also a whiff for Bay Area headline writers, who missed: ‘Innocent Guilty.’ “

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