Category: Daily Rants

I have recommended Sally Jenkins’ columns many times in the history of these rants.  Her latest column in the Washington Post from yesterday is excellent; you can find it here.  The main message is that the NFL has known that Danny Boy Snyder is a hot mess as an owner; and therefore, the NFL owns a piece of the current sexual harassment mess.  Let me give you one paragraph from the middle of the column to whet your appetite:

“Roger Goodell and Snyder’s fellow owners know exactly who and what Snyder is from league meetings. He operates with a combination of panting twerpism, incurable nastiness, and wormy duplicity, throwing human shields and checkbooks in front of him to absorb the blast injuries caused by his behavior.”

Yesterday, I anticipated the start of the 2020 MLB season that will happen here in DC in the evening.  Soon after that emergence, the NBA will re-emerge from its season-interruptus with a two-week finish to the regular season followed by the playoffs.  The teams are now in a bubble in Orlando and will remain there so long as the teams continue to play.  Games will be in empty arenas which will make for interesting TV.  A reader sent me an e-mail yesterday reminding me that basketball shoes make a lot of noise on a basketball floor; that noise is hidden for the most part by crowd noise at a “normal” NBA game but that it will be very noticeable in an empty arena.  I agree; it will be a different experience.

There is also the possibility that the networks will need to put in a short delay on the telecasts.  Without a crowd, it is more than merely possible that commentary between and among the players will be “loud and clear”.  Let us just say that all such verbal exchanges are not aligned with “G-Rated” or even “PG-Rated” television.  Once again, the normal crowd noise would tend to drown out such language.

Several folks have asked me over the past month or so why the NBA went to such lengths to concoct a partial ending to its “regular season” and why they did not just take the playoff eligible teams and start the playoffs from the beginning.  It should not be a huge shock for anyone to learn that the answer is money.

• NBA teams have local TV contracts in addition to the national TV deals that the league negotiates with the networks.  Most of those local contracts have a clause in there that requires the individual team to provide the network with a minimum of 70 regular season games to put on the air.
• When the NBA pulled the plug on the original schedule for its games, teams had played between 65 and 67 games.  Almost all the teams would have lost plenty of money on those local TV deals.  But with the addition of some more “regular season games”…

The question then becomes, why not let every team “finish its season”.  I think logistics gets in the way of that one.  The NBA wants to begin its playoffs by mid August – – again for financial reasons:

• The NBA does not want to have to go up against MLB’s World Series and NFL regular season games (assuming both take place). That could depress TV ratings significantly and that is not a financial plus.
• That means keeping the playoffs contained to September and early October.
• As it stands now with some teams “eliminated” from play, the schedule in the bubble is crammed with games such that the regular season ends on August 14.  Some days will see 7 games played in the 3 gyms available for play.  The “early game” will start at 1:00 PM EDT and the “late game” will tip off at 9:00 PM.  Imagine trying to squeeze another 50 games or so with those sorts of schedule/deadline/facility constraints.

The players and the league may not agree on everything, but they do seem united on one topic where they are engaged in preemptive conditioning.  Both the league and the players assert that whoever wins the 2020 NBA Championship should not have an asterisk placed next to their accomplishment. The “party line” is that winning the title this year will be much more difficult a task than winning it in a normal season.  [Aside:  That is a dumb stance to take from a PR point of view.  In future years, it is unlikely that the league will have to do what it did back in March.  So, therefore, all future NBA Champions will have done something easier than this year’s champion?  All future champs are chumps by comparison?  How dumb is that?]  Players, coaches and even The Commish are championing that line of reasoning.

Lest you think I am exaggerating the “party line” here, consider these remarks from Clippers’ coach, Doc Rivers:

“Whoever comes out of this, it’s going to come down to mental toughness.  There’s going to be so many things thrown at us that we don’t even know yet.  I’ll use the Navy SEALs as an example.  They get deployed and don’t know the situation.  They don’t know when exactly they’re going, but they keep preparing so that they’re ready when called upon.  The way I look at it, our situation is like that.  I feel like we’re going to be deployed for a mission in Orlando and we have to have great mental toughness to finish it.”

Normally, I pay a lot of attention to what Doc Rivers has to say, but that sort of rhetoric is a bit over the top for me.

Finally, for those who plan to tune in to the Nationals/Yankees game to inaugurate the 2020 MLB season, there is good news and bad news:

• Good News:  The Nationals’ tradition of the “racing Presidents” will continue to happen “albeit in altered form” – – whatever that means.
• Bad News:  The Nats’ bald eagle mascot, Screech, will not be present for any of the Nats’ home games this season.

Or … do I have the good news and bad news reversed?

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

 

 

At 7:00 PM EDT tomorrow, MLB will do what it normally does in the early Spring.  The MLB regular season will begin with a game between the Yankees and the Nationals here in DC.  The composite schedule calls for a total of 900 games to be played between tomorrow and September 27^th; as much as those games will represent competition between the two teams on the same field, the progress of the season itself represents a competition between MLB and COVID-19.  MLB will not try to be  “Bubble Sport”; it will play its games in each team’s home stadium – save for the Blue Jays who cannot travel back and forth to Canada under current travel restrictions.  The most noticeable concession MLB has made to COVID-19 to date is that there will be no fans in the stands.

[Aside:  The NFL plans to follow a similar scheduling/playing mode starting in September.  I would think that NFL officials will be watching what happens and how MLB reacts to whatever happens over the next 6 weeks.  There could be some lessons to be learned…]

At the start of this abbreviated MLB season, rosters will be expanded to 30 players for the first two weeks; then teams will have to cut down to 28 players for two more weeks and ultimately finish the season with a 26-man roster.  This modification is based on the idea that players had a vastly different version of “Spring Training” this year and the expanded rosters will allow teams/players to ease into the grind of regular games.  [Aside:  The season is 60 games long played in a stretch of 65 days.  There are not a lot of “days off”.]  However, expanded rosters might affect the conduct of the games themselves – especially for “creative managers”.

Last year, lots of teams carried 13 pitchers on a 25-man roster.  That meant the manager had 4 position players on the bench with one of those players being the “emergency catcher”.  That situation did not leave a lot of room for “maneuvering”; pinch runners became an endangered species.  With rosters expanded, those sorts of things could make a comeback in 2020 – – so long as teams choose not to carry 17 or 18 pitchers.

And that is an alteration to “normal baseball” we might see in 2020.  With even more pitching arms on the bench and in the bullpen, we might see a parade of relief pitchers even in early innings and starters rarely going longer than 5 innings.  If the relievers happen between innings, that should not be a big deal – save for fantasy league managers – but if they happen during innings, it will slow the game down significantly.  No one needs that to happen.

The presence of the DH in the all games this year is not something I look forward to, but it is going to happen, so I need to get  used to it.  I think that rule is a boon to the Chicago Cubs who will be able to use Kyle Schwarber as their DH on days when he is not in the field.  Getting him into games where he need not wear a glove is a plus.

To the fan tuning in to games on TV, they should expect changes – and not all of them will be positive ones.  National telecasts are going to have “piped in crowd noise”.  Supporters of this “innovation” say it adds to the ambience of the game and that it is really no different that what baseball did back in the early days of radio with its “reconstructed games”.  Personally, I do not think it adds to the ambience; it certainly does not add to it in English Premier League telecasts that I have watched.  Moreover, there is a fundamental difference between listening to a game on the radio and watching it on TV.

• On radio, the entire experience is an imaginary one constructed in the mind of the listener.
• On TV, anyone with eyesight better than Stevie Wonder will be able to figure out that the “absent fans” in the stadium are not making that noise (s)he is hearing.

There is an even more pernicious possibility open to TV producers for games this season.  In any 3-hour telecast of baseball game, tens of minutes are devoted to “crowd shots” notwithstanding the fact that 99% of the crowd shots are of no known value.  What will those creative producers do this year with no fans to show?  Well, every network has a ton of crowd shots in their “video vaults”.  Would you put it past those producers to dip into those annals as a way to “spice things up” and “keep things going” during games this year?  I hope they do not succumb to this temptation – -but I am not sure…

Forget all the possible ways that the MLB season or the telecasts of its games might fly headlong into a cliff face; the season is going to start tomorrow and here is proof positive that it is going to happen.  On CBSSports.com this morning, there is a story under this headline:

• 20 Bold Predictions for MLB season

Most of the time, “Bold Prediction” equates to “Wild Guess” or “Statistical Oddity” from the past that is projected onto the present.  If you are interested in such stuff you can find it here.  I thought a couple of the “Bold Predictions” were interesting:

• The baseball will be even more juiced in 2020 than it was in 2019.
• Khris Davis will hit .247 in 2020.  [He hit .247 in three of the past four years.]
• Shohei Otani will be the Angels’ best player.
• Kris Bryant will be traded – – to the Phillies
• Both World Series teams from last year will miss the playoffs in 2020
• The Dodgers will win the 2020 World Series.

Finally, Brewers’ first  baseman, Logan Morrison, had this response to a question about what it would be like to play games in empty stadiums:

“It’s not going to be that difficult. I played with the Rays and Marlins.”

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

 

 

I want to pick up today where I left off last Friday.  The NFL announced that it would not be conducting an investigation of its own into the allegations of sexual harassment and a “toxic culture” in the Washington team ‘s front office.  The NFL said that it would rely on the investigation done by Wilkinson Walsh – the outside law firm hired by the team and Danny Boy – to conduct a thorough review of what happened.  That seems more than a bit out of character for the NFL:

• When someone alleged that the Patriots had deflated footballs, the league did not rely on an investigation done by the Patriots.
• During the days of “Bountygate”, the league did not rely on an investigation done by the Saints.
• Often when players have “interactions” with the law, the league reviews what law enforcement comes up with and then does an investigation of its own in addition.

So, why is this situation different?  In addition to the “optic” that Wilkinson Walsh was retained by the team and Danny Boy and not the NFL, there will necessarily be some skepticism about the thoroughness of the report unless several situations obtain:

1. Ms. Wilkinson must be able to speak with the 14 women who chose not to speak with the Washington Post reporters for the story that set all this in motion.  Those women feared being sued by the team/Danny Boy if they spoke up because they had signed non-disclosure agreements.  So, the situation here is pretty simple; if this report is to be “thorough”, then the team and Danny Boy have to release those women from those non-disclosure agreements for the purposes of this investigation or the words “bogus” and “sham” will never go away.
2. Ms. Wilkinson must be able to speak to the two people who were fired by the team days before this story broke and to Larry Michael who “retired” the day before the report hit the streets.  Absent that information, the only way to portray the investigation as “thorough” would be to attribute mind-reading skills to Ms. Wilkinson.
3. Since the allegations made in the Post report go back as far as 2006, what information might be gleaned from “folks in charge” back then who are no longer with the team – to include Vinnie Cerrato, Bruce Allen and all the head coaches the team has had since then?

Since there are such obvious criteria for the “thoroughness” of this investigation and its subsequent report of findings, I am surprised that the NFL would declare that it would take the team report as the basis for any action by the league.  If one “follows the money” in this case, the money flows from the team to Wilkinson Walsh and not from the NFL to Wilkinson Walsh.

Last week, I also wrote about Jason Whitlock and his new “home” at Outkick.com.  Here is a link to his column on the revelations in the Washington Post article.  I do not agree with everything here, but it is an interesting and different view of the situation.

I am a regular reader of The Guardian online although usually not for sports or much of anything that I would comment on here.  Last week, however, The Guardian published a report with the following headline and sub-headline:

• Competitive hotdog eaters nearing limit of human performance
• A maximum of 84 hotdogs in 10 minutes is possible, says sports science study

Here is the link to that report in The Guardian.  On July 4^th, Joey Chestnut set the world record for eating hot-dogs at 75 franks in 10 minutes.  If the study reported here is correct, Joey Chestnut is performing at 90% of the human limitation for scarfing down hot dogs in 10 minutes.

I had to check out this report to try to understand the sports science involved.  I expected to find a treatise on muscular strength in the jaw along with the size of the human pharynx and the expansion coefficient of the human stomach analyzed considering the frictional forces between hot dogs and the esophagus.  There was no such thing…

The conclusion here is based on a mathematical model of human sports performance(s) over history.  According to the author of the study, James Smoliga, sports performance varies with time in a sigmoidal curve.  Fitting that sort of curve to the records in the July 4^th hot dog eating contests over the past 39 years yields a theoretical upper limit of 84 hot dogs in 10 minutes.  The final paragraph of the story in The Guardian put this annual celebration of gluttony into a biological perspective:

“According to the research, published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, the achievements of human speed eaters are impressive even by comparison with other species. ‘Humans are able to eat faster than bears or coyotes,’ said Smoliga. Wolves, which devour prey at incredible speed, could outdo even elite human eaters, however.”

Finally, here are two comments from around the country pertinent to the annual hot dog eating contest:

“Whenever I eat 75 hot dogs in 10 minutes, I always insist on a private location.”  [Tweet from “wannabe raconteur” Brad Dickson]

And …

“Just wondering: If Joey Chestnut doesn’t need four preseason tuneups, why does the NFL?”  [Dwight Perry, Seattle Times]

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

 

 

For the last three or four days, there has been a “ripple in The Force” around the DC area.  Mysterious Tweets kept showing up saying that a big story was about to break and that it was going to land on the Washington NFL Team Currently-Without-A-Name.  It was supposed to break on Tuesday; then it was Thursday; well, it hit the Internet last night and it is on the front page directly under the masthead in this morning’s Washington Post.  The jump for the article is also in the front section; there is no mention of this story or anything related to this story in today’s 3-page Sports Section.

Here is the link to the story.  It is long and it is sleazy – but it is not nearly as bad as I had conjured up in my mind as the time between its supposed release and its eventual release stretched to more than a day.  Here is the summary:

• Fifteen women accuse a handful of executives in the team’s “business side” of sexual harassment and creating a toxic work culture that goes back at least to 2006.
• Two female reporters who covered the team also allege that they were subject to improper advances and touching
• Two of those men were fired last week; a third announced his resignation from the team yesterday afternoon.
• Allegations of improper touching, propositioning and peering up women’s dresses through plexiglass stair steps populate the story.

Just so you know, this is pretty mild stuff when compared to what my mind had conjured up for the rumored “blockbuster story”.  Here are the two most outrageous scenarios I had concocted in my mind.  Please note, the key words there are “concocted in my mind” …

1. Somehow and in some way this would be a lurid tale of sex for sale wherein Jeffrey Epstein was a “service provider” and that somehow someone in the team hierarchy had been involved in the elusive activities of Ghislaine Maxwell over the past several months.  Not even close!
2. A US Attorney somewhere had been investigating and would soon announce an indictment of Danny Boy and/or Bruce Allen for some sort of Madoff-like Ponzi Scheme.  Not even close!

For the record:

• No one alleges improper conduct by either Danny Boy or Bruce Allen.  Some of the accusers allege that they “set the tone” for the organization but that neither did anything as specifically wrong as any of the charges here.
• Only one of the fifteen accusers is identified; the other fourteen spoke on the condition of anonymity because they say that they are subject to non-disclosure agreements.
• A couple of years ago, the team’s cheerleaders accused some of the “business people” of bringing some of the expensive suite holders to a photo shoot where – allegedly – some of the suite holders had the opportunity to see the cheerleaders topless.  These allegations say that there was always pressure to “appeal to” these folks who bought the expensive stadium suites.  There is no overlap – – but there is parallelism.

[Aside:  As the team continues to search for a new name and a new identity, I think we can now assume that two possible names are “off the table”.  Considering this report – and what will surely be follow-up reporting – I think you can kiss goodbye the names Washington Red Tails and Washington Predators.  Then again, I have no expertise in marketing/branding.]

Putting pieces together after the fact, some of the unusual happenings of the past week now make some sense.  Last week, the team announced that it had fired its director of pro personnel and its assistant director of pro personnel.  Given that training camp was about to start, it seemed like a strange time to do that.  However, the team announced the hiring of a guy for the top job there who had formerly been with the Carolina Panthers and so I just figured that this guy was someone who had earned coach Ron Rivera’s trust and that this was a way to get another “Rivera-guy” into a key position.  While that last motivation may still be true, I think this report provides the real reason for the strange timing of those firings.

The announcement yesterday afternoon of the resignation of Larry Michael – “The Voice of the Skins” on radio and TV – was more than unusual.  For about 15 years, Michael has been the ultimate homer and a team apologist to the point of sycophancy.  He often came across like the kid in 7^th grade who always asked the teacher what he could do for extra credit on any assignment.  When he resigned with no fanfare and with no acknowledgement or appreciation from anyone in team management, that scored a “10” on the “Bizarro-Meter”.

Fans have already expressed hope that all this sleaze will make the NFL force Danny Boy to sell the team.  I believe that is wishful thinking given what we know so far; no one alleges that Danny Boy did any of the harassing/touching.  Just as it took major economic pressure from big-money interests to force Danny Boy to change the team name, it would take even bigger economic pressure from even more big-money interests to pressure the NFL as a league to rid itself of Danny Boy as an owner.  Hey, in 2020 we have seen that just about anything is possible – – but I still think this is wishful thinking on the part of disheartened fans in the DC area.

Here is something to bolster my point that Danny Boy will not be forced to relinquish the team:

• The team has hired the outside law firm of Wilkinson Walsh to “conduct a thorough independent review of this entire matter and help the team set new employee standards for the future.”  That is pretty standard stuff – – but the NFL already announced that it will rely on the findings of Wilkinson Walsh to determine what – if anything – the league should do about any of this.
• It is the team – and by extension, Danny Boy – that has hired Beth Wilkinson for this independent review.  The team and Danny Boy are her clients; the chances that she will come up with anything that puts the team’s future under Danny Boy in jeopardy are minuscule.

Memo to DC Area Fans:  The team is not changing hands based on anything revealed here – and it will take a lot more to kick that snowball over the cliff.  It will take more than another shoe to drop; it will take another dozen or so shoes to drop.

There is an interesting irony here that fans will glom onto because it denigrates Bruce Allen who was fired as team president and GM at the end of last season.  At the end of his tenure here, no one would have confused him with a “fan favorite”.  Two of Bruce Allen’s pronouncements about the team particularly grated on fans.  He once said – after yet another losing season – that the team was “winning off the field”.  Fans did not take kindly to that.  In another time at the podium, he said that the team culture was “damned good”.  Well, the allegations in this report go back to 2006 and Allen was around from 2010-2019.  Is that what “winning off the field” looks like?  The team culture does not sound “damned good” to me and it will not to a lot of callers to DC Sports Radio shows today and tomorrow…

There will be more reporting on this story so let me take stock of the story at this point in time.  There are strong points and there are weak points; there are lots of speculations still out there.

• Please note that in what sounds like an environment populated with testosterone-driven sub-humans, there are no allegations that any players were involved in any of these incidents.  The alleged perpetrators – people no longer with the team – were nominally professional executives.
• Those who are pre-disposed to dislike this report can and will point to the fact that there is only one named source and that a lot of this is based on anonymous/unnamed sources.  That is true; it is also true that the team took action against two of its executives prior to the publication of the story indicating to me that the team has some inkling of “improprieties” even before the outside counsel delivers its report.
• I hate to hear about situations where facts germane to the situation are restricted by non-disclosure agreements.  Those instruments not only get in the way of resolving disputes, but they also create an aura of suspicion about the motivations of all the parties to those agreements.  Why does one party want to keep things quiet?  What did the other party get in return for agreeing to keep things quiet?  Non-disclosure agreements make sense to protect the revelation of trade secrets and/or properly classified information; none of that sort of information appears pertinent here.

Obviously, the findings of the outside counsel will be an important element in the future of this story.  However, as I said above, do not expect any bombshells in there and be prepared for some cosmetic organization chart revisions for the team front office.  There may be another “Casanova wannabe” or two uncovered in the organization who will be terminated but they are not likely to be anyone sitting at a mahogany desk.  I will not be surprised to learn from the outside counsel that the folks already fired/separated were indeed as bad as alleged by the accusers – and maybe even worse.  But that is about as far as this one is likely to go.

So, until we know for sure what the outside counsel comes up with, this story has an unsatisfactory element to it.  As it stands now, it is sort of like the time when Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vaults.  There was great anticipation; people were going to learn something that could be really salacious; and it turned out to be as exciting as shredded wheat.

Stay tuned … but be sure you have something to occupy your time as this saga grinds to its conclusion.  It should take a while and it probably will not be overly dramatic at the end.

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

 

 

Just so there is no misunderstanding:

• I really hope that football – – college and professional – – can happen in the Fall of 2020.

That is what I want to happen; that is what would happen if I ran across a magic lamp and the genie inside gave me one sports wish that it would grant.  Unfortunately, I think the chances of my wish coming true are diminishing week by week.

Maybe – just maybe – the NFL can throw enough money and people resources at the testing/tracing/PPE issues to put on a season.  After all, that is a business entity that rakes in $15B per year and none of the owners of the franchises could be fairly described as “strapped for resources”.  I would like to hold on to that possibility as “a good thought” for today – – because there are not a lot of other good thoughts floating through my mind.

I have said before that college football is in much more danger than the NFL simply because the costs involved in keeping a football team healthy enough to perform are significant and colleges do not have the kinds of fiscal resources that the NFL has.  The more I think about it, the less sanguine I become about seeing college football in 2020.

In its attempt to restart its season, the NBA – – and the WNBA – – have resorted to a “Bubble Strategy” wherein players and coaches are isolated from the outside world and medical testing is done repeatedly and frequently.  The NBA can afford to do that because it has deep pockets and because NBA rosters are small.

College football teams have about 100 players and when you add in the coaches and the trainers and the rest of the staff, there are probably 150 people who would need to be “Bubbled Up”.  That represents an expense level that is not acceptable and so the college football team will need to join with the rest of the university community by living in dorms and going to classes which is the antithesis of being in a bubble.  And for those schools that will go “totally online” for the Fall Semester, what sort of optic does it provide if students are not allowed back on campus, but the football team is?

Moreover, the closer we get to what would be a “typical” college football season, the more I begin to think that there is no good reason to do such a thing.  As I said above, the NFL is a $15B per year – or more – business enterprise and the players collectively earn something in the neighborhood of $7B a year.  Even before COVID-19 did the species jump to infect humans, NFL players risked their bodies and their long-term health to collect the salaries offered to them.  One could argue about the rationality of such decisions by the players, but enough of them decided to take those risks to allow the NFL to put on its show year after year.

So, in a sense, COVID-19 is an “added-layer of risk” for an NFL player in 2020.  In addition to all the potential orthopedic health hazards and the potential for CTE or other brain dysfunctions down the road, the NFL player in 2020 must factor in the contagion called COVID-19 into his “health versus salary calculus”.  However, college football players have no such calculus to perform for a single obvious reason:

• College football players do not get paid to play football.

College players only have their scholarships – plus room and board and Pell Grants – to balance against their health risks which includes COVID-19 in 2020.  And if we look objectively at all the scholarship football players in the US, what percentage of those players seriously value those scholarships as educational assets?  If I set a prop bet at 50% of the players, would you take OVER or UNDER?

Irrational Me wants college football for hedonistic reasons; I really enjoy watching and following college football.  Rational Me recognizes that college players are taking on added risk by playing this year for no added benefit – and that makes exactly no sense.

Rational Me thinks this is going to be an unsatisfactory Fall in 2020…

And just for the record, I do not find any soothing qualities in any of the pronouncements that there might be college football in the Spring of 2021.  If such a thing were to happen, it would be discordant – – sort of like a 60-game MLB season is going to be discordant.  College football belongs in the Fall not in the Spring.  Having said that, college football does not belong in the Fall at the expense of added risk to the health of the college football players.

Focusing on reality here, even if some schools find ways to play some games this Fall, it is not going to be the “same game”.  Michigan will not have 110,000 fans in their stadium for home games; lots of games will happen with no one in the stands; the TV networks will add recorded crowd noise to their telecasts; the product in 2020 – if there is a product – is going to be ersatz at best.

So, maybe the best thing for the college football mavens to do is to give fans the awful dose of castor oil and get it over with.  The taste of the castor oil will go away, and fans will go through the multiple levels of grieving for the loss of college football.  Just call if off…

There was news yesterday that the Rose Parade for Jan 1, 2021 has been canceled.  That decision was not made because there is a shortage of roses; that decision was made because of the potentially disastrous public health repercussions from holding the parade.  So, ask yourself this:

• If the Rose Parade is a public health risk not worth taking, would a Rose Bowl Game played in the same venue make sense?

Finally, Bob Molinaro had this item in his column in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot recently.  There is plenty of blame to be handed out to scientists, medical folks and politicians of all persuasions regarding COVID-19; this comment points the finger at another group that needs some shaming:

“Stand-up guy: Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle, a U.Va. man, stuck out his neck to make a point about America’s issues with COVID-19. ‘Sports,’ he said, ‘are like the reward of a functioning society. If there aren’t sports, it’s going to be because people are not wearing masks. We need help from the general public.’”

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

 

 

Last week when writing about the pressure on the Washington NFL team to change its name, I suggested Washington Gridlock as a possible name to reflect the traffic in and around the city as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of the Congress and the Administration.  Now that the team has embarked on a “process” to get a new name, I will use “Gridlock” as a placeholder name until there is an official one.

It seems that this story is fading on the national scale as well it should, but here in the nation’s capital, it continues to be a big deal for reasons that confound me.  The Washington Post sports section has shrunk to a maximum of 3 pages in the daily editions; sometimes it is only 2 pages long.  Even with that limited real estate on the pages, the Post continues to grind this story into the ground.  This area has 3 sports radio stations – – apocalyptic, I know – – and every time there is a local program on the air, you can bet that at least 2 segments per hour will focus on the new name for the Gridlock.

One of the latest angles on this story goes like this:

• As late as July 1^st, the team had done nothing regarding a name change or a rebranding.
• Early on, Coach Ron Rivera said that the team would consult with Native Americans about a new name as part of “the process”.
• [Aside:  I know that Ron Rivera is part of Danny Boy’s inner circle today, but he is there to coach a football team and not to pick a brand for the damned team.  Or is that just me …?]
• Now there are “reports” that the team wants to be rebranded by the start of the NFL season but that the league wants all of this done by the start of Training Camp if possible.  [Training Camp opens in 13 days…]
• The sense you get from these inside reports is like the final few moments of a Benny Hill sketch.

I have exactly no experience with marketing and branding; I tend think many of the actions and pronouncements made in the name of “branding” to be over-wrought.  However, I have the feeling that the Washington Gridlock needs to get their rebranding right even if it is not gotten quickly.  In the world of development and engineering, there is a statement of warning that folks need to remember when something goes wrong and needs fixing to maintain a schedule.  Here is that warning:

• If there is time to do this over, there is time to do this right.

Get it right, Gridlock…!

I have heard some sports commentators suggest that Patrick Mahomes’ deal with the Chiefs (10-years for $500M with about $150M guaranteed) provides a template for the negotiations between the Cowboys and Dak Prescott.  I have thought about this for a couple of days now and I do not understand where those commentators are headed with this.

Dak Prescott is a franchise QB in the NFL; only the most virulent “Cowboy-hater” would deny that.  He has signed his franchise tag contract for this season meaning that in the absence of a long-term deal, he will make $31.4M this year guaranteed.  This will be his 5^th year in the NFL and in his first 4 seasons, he earned approximately $4M.  So, please do not shed tears for Dak Prescott and liken his situation to slavery; he is making a ton of money this year and could easily be an unrestricted free agent next year.  [I believe that he will have to make a minimum of $37.7M next year if the Cowboys use the franchise tag again.]

Having said all the above, I still do not understand the idea that the “Mahomes Deal” is a template for a “Prescott Deal” down the road.  Dak Prescott is not Patrick Mahomes in terms of stats or in terms of accomplishments; that is not to diminish Prescott’s accomplishments; it is simple an acknowledgement of reality.

According to reports, the Cowboys offer to Prescott is 5 years for $175M with $105M guaranteed.  Let me take those numbers as Gospel because I have no inside information to offer up here.  In addition, according to reports, the “sticking point” in the negotiations is the length of the contract; the Cowboys want 5 years and Prescott wants 4 years.  Again, I will take that information at face value.  So, if these are the conditions on the table in the Cowboys/Prescott contract talks, I do not see how commentators can say that the “Mahomes Deal” offers a template.

• Mahomes signed for 10 years.  The Cowboys and Prescott are squabbling over a fifth year.  Neither side seemingly wants anything that goes on for so long.

Here is the only way I can look at the “Mahomes Deal” and say that it offers anything that might guide the Cowboys/Prescott negotiations:

• If you take the Cowboys’ offer and scale it up to 10 years in length, it will have a salary total of $350M with about $210M guaranteed.
• Those numbers – compared to “Mahomes’ numbers” – tell me that Prescott might be ever so slightly underpaid over the course of these imagined 10 years but that his guaranteed money would be far too much.

Finally, Dwight Perry had this observation about another set of NFL contract extension negotiations in the Seattle Times recently:

“The Browns are talking contract extension with defensive end Myles Garrett.

“Team negotiators are hereby advised to keep their chin straps fastened.”

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

 

 

I turned to Google yesterday just out of curiosity; I knew that Jason Whitlock and FOX Sports had parted company; but until yesterday, I did not know what Whitlock was doing with his life and his communication skills.  Google let me quickly learn that he signed on with Outkick.com which is the re-branded name for what started as Outkickthecoverage.com; that is the platform where you can find Clay Travis’ writings also.

I can take or leave Travis’ essays; I like Whitlock’s writings a lot.  Let me be clear; I like Whitlock’s writing not because I agree with him; in fact, I probably disagree with him at least half the time.  What I like is that I always come away from one of his essays thinking about what he said.  Sometimes I come away thinking about how I would frame a counter-argument were I in a discussion with him; other times I come away wishing that I had been able to make his point before reading what he wrote.  Rarely do I come away from a Jason Whitlock piece – written or verbal – and think, “Meh!”

I first discovered Whitlock as a columnist for the Kansas City Star and enjoyed his time at ESPN particularly when he was a fill-in host on Pardon the Interruption; he fit very well with either Kornheiser or Wilbon on that program.  He bounced from ESPN to FOX Sports and back to ESPN and back to FOX again.  In his latest FOX Sports incarnation, he was a co-host on Speak for Yourself first with Colin Cowherd and then with Marcellus Wiley.  For me, the original pairing with Cowherd was excellent; the later partnership with Wiley was good – – but not as good.

Here is a link where you can find his essays at Outkick.com.  Please do not go there expecting to find a compendium of “Dr. Feelgood pieces”; you may well find that you fundamentally disagree with him 40% of the time, but I believe he will make you think about his point of view and your point of view in juxtaposition.

Welcome back, Jason Whitlock…

Last week, the Jacksonville Jaguars announced that they hoped to be able to play home games in front of fans this year albeit with TIAA Bank Stadium limited to 25% capacity.  That announcement is noteworthy because it represents unbridled optimism on three levels:

1. It assumes that there will be and NFL season in 2020.  For the record, I really want that to be the case; but my pragmatist streak says that that not much more than an even-money bet at the moment.
2. It assumes that the State of Florida and the City of Jacksonville will permit outdoor gatherings of a sufficient size to make those home games comply with local ordinances.  The COVID-19 “numbers” in Florida are horrible currently; yes, there is time to get things under control prior to any scheduled Jags’ home game.  However, whatever “phase” Florida and Floridians find themselves in today, it is not a good “phase” AND they have not yet shown that they know how to move toward a safe “phase” reliably.
3. It assumes that 16,750 people – – 25% of TIAA Bank Field’s seating capacity – – will want to come out and see the 2020 version of the Jaguars.

Dwight Perry had this MLS item in the Seattle Times recently:

“Two teams — FC Dallas and Nashville SC — had to pull out of the MLS is Back Tournament after too many players tested positive for coronavirus.

“On second thought, just call it the Well, Most of MLS is Back Tournament.”

Things got worse for MLS after that jab from Professor Perry; Toronto FC and DC United had a game postponed twice because a Toronto player had an inconclusive test and a DC player had a positive test for COVID-19.  The teams finally played yesterday, and the result was a draw.

All did not go well with the return of the National Women’s Soccer League either.  The NWSL planned to be the first US sports league back in business with a 25-game tournament that was to begin on June 25^th. The Orlando team had to withdraw from the tournament even before it had a chance to begin when 6 players and 4 staff members of the team tested positive for COVID-19.

Compare those happenstances with the English Premier League which has returned to the pitch playing out its season with no fans in the stands.  Last week, the EPL reported that it had tested almost 2000 players, employees and staff members and found ZERO positive results.  I am no epidemiologist, but it would seem to me that soccer games and soccer practices ought to be similar on either side of the Atlantic Ocean; so, there needs to be something else at work here to explain the different “soccer experiences” with COVID-19.

My untutored conclusion is found in the stats related to the COVID-19 pandemic:

• The total number of cases reported in the UK from the beginning of March is 290,000 cases.
• Since July 1^st, the number of new cases identified each day has ranged from about 350 to 820 per day.
• The total number of cases reported in the US from the beginning of March is 3,430,000 cases.
• Since July 1^st, the number of new cases identified each day has ranged from about 43,000 to 66,800 per day.
• The population in the US is about 5 times greater than the population in the UK.  It does not take a PhD in mathematics to see that the COVID-19 virus has spread a whole lot more in the US than it has in the UK.  “Community spread” is much greater here in the US; Americans should take no pride in that data.

Finally, here is one more item from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times:

“The Fuji-Q Highland amusement park in Japan, saying that droplets from screaming on roller coasters could spread the coronavirus, is urging riders to ‘Please scream inside your heart.’

“If you think that’s extreme, wait’ll they try to ban booing in Philadelphia.”

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

 

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, here’s Johnny Mathis …  <applause>

“You ask how long I’ll love you, I’ll tell you true

Until the Twelfth of Never, I’ll still be loving you.”

Today must be the Twelfth of Never – even though the Julian calendar says it is the 13^th of July – because today Danny Boy Snyder reneged on his promise to NEVER (in caps as he said it should be) change the name of his Washington football franchise.  Reports this morning say the idea is to retain the team colors and that the new name has not been announced yet because trademark applications need to happen and be approved before a new name can be attached to the team.

You are going to read some pieces in the next several days about the persistence of activists who have been working toward this name change for the last 40 years or so.  Smile when you read them; the writer will have made himself/herself feel good by writing that stuff and the subjects will feel as if it has all been worth the struggle.  But that is not what happened…

• This name change came about because George Floyd died a horrible death in Minneapolis.

That’s it; that’s the reason.  The protests and the social awareness changes that sprang from that event led a large number of big-money interests to take action related to racism in the US and it is the action(s) of those big-money interests that have changed the name of the Washington NFL franchise.  Sorry not to begin this week with a feelgood moment; but that is the reality…

[Aside:  Here in the DC area, I fully expect to read a letter to the editor sometime in the next week saying that the writer has been a Skins fan since they played in Griffith Stadium (the 1950s) and that this name change is like losing a family member.  Preemptively, let me say that I hope you get over this “setback” more quickly than over the loss of a family member.]

Moving on …  Usually, when athletes, coaches or celebrities speak out on social or political issues, my reaction is to hear what they have to say and then to ask for one of two things:

1. The objective data/circumstances that support the position taken by the individual – and/or –
2. The credentials of the individual to be authoritative on the subject.

Over the years, I have been criticized for those sorts of stances as being “too harsh” or “too narrow-minded”.  I plead guilty to “too harsh”; I plead innocent to “too narrow-minded” on the basis that what I want to hear is more information from the declarer here which is the antithesis of being narrow-minded.  Last week, I ran across a demonstration of why these criteria are useful ones – particularly the second one.

Lou Holtz – a generally likeable and affable former football coach – was a guest on a FOX news program called The Ingraham Angle.  I cannot recall ever watching this program so I cannot provide much context for how the following sort of business came into being.  Coach Holtz was strongly in favor of opening up sports and particularly college football; here is a sample of what he had to say:

“The way it is right now, they just don’t want to have sports and there’s no way in this world you can do anything in this world without a risk.  People stormed Normandy … they knew there was going to be casualties, they knew there was going to be risk, but it was a way of life.”

Thomas Jefferson found a few things to be “self-evident”.  I would hope that in 2020, it would be equally self-evident that the situations that required the storming of the beaches at Normandy on D-Day were fundamentally different from the situations we face today regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.  I will point out only one fundamental difference here:

• By taking the risk of invading at Normandy, the men who fought and died there did so to kill off and remove permanently the world threat of Nazism and Adolf Hitler and his cronies.
• By taking the risk of throwing tens of thousands of people into close proximity to play and watch sporting events, the people involved will NOT kill off the coronavirus.  What they will do with those actions is to make a lot more people sick.

As I said above, Lou Holtz is a nice and affable man.  However, I am now fully convinced that I will never go to him for any information related in any way to public health policy and practices.

And speaking obliquely about college football in the Fall of 2020, several of the big-time conferences have announced that they will only play against conference opponents this year.  The thinking behind this is that teams will play against other teams that are adhering to a common set of health and safety standards [theoretically] and such a schedule will minimize travel burdens for the teams [Be sure to ignore the 1200 mile trip from Nebraska to Rutgers and/or the 1250 mile trip from Boston College to Miami].

But there is another element of illogic at work here.  If you believe that any/all of the Power-5 Conferences that hope to play football in the Fall will have efficient and effective measures in place to minimize the spread of the coronavirus, then interconference games between Power-5 teams ought to be OK.  And in fact, there are more than a few “traditional rivalry games” that are interconference games that involve minimal travel:

• Clemson and the University of South Carolina are about 100 miles apart.
• Florida and Florida State are about 125 miles apart.
• Notre Dame and Michigan are about 125 miles apart.
• Pitt and West Virginia are about 50 miles apart.

If the various conferences can stage games “safely” among their member schools, why would those traditional games be any more dangerous?

I’ll hang up and listen for the answer…

Finally, sticking with the ideas of “football” and “things that are self-evident”, here is an observation by Bob Molinaro in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot a couple of weeks ago:

“You don’t say: Johnny Manziel recently acknowledged that his football career is ‘in the past.’ This is not what we in the newspaper business would call a scoop.”

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

 

 

There is this thing called credibility.  And there is this other thing called competence.  You can concoct circumstances wherein someone or something is competent but still not credible.  It is far less likely that a lack of competence would yield an aura of credibility.  And this morning we have an example of that last situation.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

• Major League Baseball.

Spring Training shut down on March 12, 2020 because of COVID-19.  Given that MLB always had the intention of re-constituting its teams for a delayed start to the 2020 season, it is fair and reasonable to suggest that they had 110 days between March 12 and July 1 to avoid the utter incompetence that was on display as of yesterday.  Lots of MLB players were born and raised in the Dominican Republic; given the lack of a baseball season, it is not mind-bending to realize that some of them went back to the D.R. to await whatever restart was going to happen.

MLB and the MLBPA frittered away most of those 110 days fighting over money; forget heaping blame on either side for that nonsense; that is what management and unions do.  However, do not forgive MLB in particular – and the union to a lesser extent – for allowing the following act of amateurish ineptitude to happen:

• Two chartered aircraft took MLB Dominican players to Miami on 1 July so that they could then join their teams to get busy with Spring Training 2.0.  [No problem here…]
• The players and the MLB staff members who were on those flights were not tested for COVID-19 before boarding the aircraft according to a report in this morning’s Washington Post.  [Are you kidding me?]
• “Multiple players” on those flights have subsequently tested positive.  [Surprise!]

Asked to explain this exacta of stupidity and incompetence leading to a total lack of credibility, here is what an MLB spokesperson had to say after noting that tests are less available in the Dominican Republic than they are in the US and that:

“… shipping saliva samples from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. was not possible due to governmental restrictions.”

MLB had 110 days to figure out minor obstacles such as:

• Availability of tests in a country whose health system and resources are not considered “gold standard”.
• How to mitigate that problem either by bringing your own tests or quarantining the players for a time before putting them on the aircraft untested.

Here is the link to the report in this morning’s Washington Post.  The author is ever so polite there by saying that this goat rodeo merely lends “more skepticism to baseball’s restart plan.”  I should say so…

The distance from Santo Domingo in the D.R to Miami is 828 miles; an aircraft can make that flight in about 90 minutes.  Add in time to load the plane, taxi to the runway, taxi around the airport in Miami and unload the plane and those folks were in a confined space with recirculated air for at least 2 hours and probably 2.5 hours.  Airplanes use HEPA filters for the recirculated air – as well they should.  The problem is that the diameter of the coronavirus is three times smaller than the pore size of the best HEPA filters.  The folks on those flights were in close contact with and breathing the same air with one another for at least 2 hours and no one knew that at least one person got on the plane with the virus in his system.

[Aside:  This is precisely why I am not about to get on an airplane to take a trip anywhere in the foreseeable future.  For the record, we have already canceled our annual autumnal pilgrimage to Las Vegas.  We did that prior to the breaking of this news; I am not about to put my health status in the hands of a couple hundred other people whose fastidiousness I have no way to measure.]

For baseball – and baseball fans – this should evoke a double face-palm simply because humans only have two arms and hands.  Supposedly, MLB has a health and protocol in place that is more than a hundred pages in length – – and it did not have a way to prevent this kind of abject stupidity to occur?  This is not about the difficulty of acquiring testing materials in the D.R.; this is about the lack of foresight regarding an obvious disease vector.  No one is going to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine this year because (s)he figured out that traveling on an airplane with an infected individual – or more – might spread the virus among the other passengers.

Since the subject here is baseball and  I have my adrenal glands pumping, let me say that if/when there are MLB games in 2020 there are two rules that will be in effect that I simply do not like:

1. The DH will be in effect for all games.  Let me say this as politely as I can.  If a player is a big fat guy who can hit the ball a mile and do nothing else on a baseball diamond at a skill level greater than a walrus on roller skates, he does not belong in the major leagues.
2. In games that go to extra innings, the team at bat will begin their innings with a runner on second base.  For the stat mavens, he will be there based on an error – – but no error will be charged to anyone.  The stat mavens should have a ball with that one.  [Aside: They should make the big fat guys who are the team DHs be that base runner…]

Finally, staying with today’s baseball theme, here is a comment by Greg Cote in the Miami Herald recently:

“Cubs pitcher Jose Quintana lacerated his thumb while washing dishes. Jose. You make big-league money. Look into this really neat invention. It’s called a dishwasher!”

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

 

 

With all the attention being paid to the NBA’s restart and the delayed opening of the MLB season and the perpetual focus on anything and everything related to the NFL, the situation regarding college football for 2020 has not gotten a lot of attention.  Many Division III schools have canceled their 2020 fall football season; the Ivy League canceled fall sports including football yesterday; major conferences see some teams involved in regulated practices and that those regulated practices are still producing large numbers of confirmed COVID-19 infections; Ohio State has “paused” the “voluntary workouts” for the football team.  These are not good omens.

About a month ago, I was pointed to a report by Bill Rabinowitz in The Columbus Dispatch.  This is a lengthy article that goes over many of the challenges facing college football programs; the headline for the article says it all:

“College football has hurdles to clear in making safe return this fall”

Rabinowitz focuses immediately on the impossibility of any sort of “social distancing” in football; he points out that the only sport with more close contact would be wrestling but in wrestling there are only two participants at a time and the encounter is much shorter than in a football game.  Here is an assessment from the medical director of the Ohio Department of Health quoted in that article:

“You have people lining up at the line of scrimmage and the offense and defense are inches apart.  You have to tackle people. Wearing masks would be difficult.

“And when you look at the respiratory droplet transmission, if you’re out of breath and breathing really hard, you can see that’s going to probably expel more respiratory droplets than others would. If you’re yelling out calls and signals instead of talking, that again is something that can emit some of those.

“So a lot of work would need to be done on this. But we also have a lot of really smart people in Ohio and elsewhere in the country that have a lot of capabilities that can figure things out.”

He forgot to mention “huddles” and “sideline interactions with assistant coaches to adjust strategies” and “the exchanges of viral loads during the flesh piles that happen after tackling”.  Indeed, a lot of work needs to be done – although I do not see a lot of it having been done between the time this article was written in late May and today.  But in addition to the structural issues involved in how the game of football happens on the field and the need for creative means to mitigate some of the more robust viral transmission vectors, there is another issue in play here:

•  All these mitigation strategies and these creative solutions to problems are going to cost money – – and not just three easy payments of $39.95.

One idea here is to create cohorts within the team.  Groups of players would be put together and they would stay together in something like a “group quarantine” to the greatest extent possible.  Sounds like a good idea and one that might be enforceable to a large extent and then come the details:

“That approach would include expanded testing and contact tracing for players, which involves monitoring everyone with whom they have been in close physical vicinity. They also strongly advocated the concept of cohorting as teams begin to return. That involves separating players into small groups that attempt to be as self-contained as possible. That way, if a player becomes infected, the exposure is limited to only his group.”

Expanded testing and contact tracing for as many as 150 people associated with a college football program who have been “out and about” for months is a daunting task.  Imagine interviewing a single player returning to campus and trying to get from him all his contacts and behaviors for the previous two or three weeks.  Then go and try to confirm those recollections to see if any of those contacts tested positive and when.  Just that first level screening could take several days – – and meanwhile, the player must be put into a cohort without knowing of his previous exposure(s).  The only way to speed that up is to have more tracers and that translates into lots more costs.

Oh, and please do not think that the “expanded testing” stops once the cohorts are formed.  That testing will need to happen throughout the season; players need not be tested daily, but they surely would need to be tested more than weekly.

I will not be surprised to hear that lots of schools – maybe even conferences – decide to forego a 2020 college football season and try to figure out how to squeeze one into the early weeks of 2010 simply based on costs.  The big-time programs – – the ones whose boosters can come up with $10-15M on the spot to buy out a coach who loses a few too many games – – may be able to stay afloat fiscally.  Maybe if they play in the fall of 2020, they will need to concoct schedules where the big-time programs fill out a schedule by playing other big-time programs in other conferences?  Another negative development yesterday came from Stanford – a big-time football school.  Stanford announced it will cut 11 non-revenue sports this year for financial reasons.

Here is the link to the article in The Columbus Dispatch to which I have referred here.  It was published on May 24^th and if any of the serious hurdles described there have been resolved to the satisfaction of scientists and medical folks, I do not know what those resolved hurdles might be.

Finally, here is a comment from Scott Ostler in the SF Chronicle:

“The ESPN documentaries on Michael Jordan and Lance Armstrong were interesting. Now how about a documentary or two on people who become superstars without being bullies and jerks? Just to show the kiddies that it can be done that way.”

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