Category: Daily Rants

I may have spoken too soon yesterday in my assessment that the NY Jets got “a meager return” for Sam Darnold in the trade with the Carolina P{anthers.  Maybe the new guys in charge of football with the Jets – – Joe Douglas as GM and Robert Saleh as head coach – – have a plan to change the fortunes of the team and the basis of that plan does not require the appearance of a Fairy Godmother every month or so.  The Jets also brought in a haul of draft picks from the Seahawks in the trade then for Jamal Adams.  Over the next two years, the Jets have plenty of “draft capital”; now the question will be how effectively will they use those assets.

• For 2021, the Jets have two first-round picks, one second-round pick, two-third round picks, one fourth-round pick, two fifth-round picks and one sixth-round pick.
• That is a total of 9 draft picks this year…
• For 2022, the Jets have two first-round picks, two second-round picks, one third-round pick, two fifth-round picks and three sixth-round picks.
• That is a total of 10 draft picks next  year….

If the plan for the Jets is to “get young” and develop young players into a formidable team at a bargain-basement cost against the salary cap, the Jets would seem to be on track to try to accomplish that.  Before anyone reminds me of my complete lack of mind-reading skills, I acknowledge that situation and I still wonder if that is “The Plan” for the current incarnation of the NY Jets.

Readers will surely recall that I am not a fan of relying on “draft capital” to rebuild a team.  I assert that the draft as it is set up does not favor the worst teams all that much and I notice that scouting reports/evaluations often do not reflect performance in the NFL.  I have suggested here several times that NFL teams place a higher value on high draft picks than I think is warranted.

Let me focus here on the first pick overall in the NFL draft over the past 22 years – since Peyton Manning went first overall and had a Hall of Fame career.  These are not random picks from the first round nor are they the first-round picks by a single team; these are the players taken before any other players in that draft class.  So, how did that work out for the teams holding that pick?

• 1999:  Tim Couch  Browns  – –  Marginal career at best
• 2000:  Courtney Brown  Browns  – –  Injury riddled career.
• 2001:  Michael Vick  Falcons  – –  Pro Bowl 4 times; a good selection.
• 2002:  David Carr  Texans  – –  Mediocre career at best
• 2003:  Carson Palmer Bengals  – –  Pro Bowl 3 times; a good selection.
• 2004:  Eli Manning  Chargers  – –  Two Super Bowl rings; an excellent choice.
• 2005:  Alex Smith  Niners  – –  Pro Bowl 3 times; a good selection.
• 2006:  Mario Williams  Texans  – –  Pro Bowl 4 times; a good selection.
• 2007:  JaMarcus Russell  Raiders  – –  Bust, plain and simple.
• 2008:  Jake Long  Dolphins  – –  Pro Bowl 4 times; a good selection.
• 2009:  Matthew Stafford  Lions  – –  Very good QB but not enough to make the Lions good.
• 2010:  Sam Bradford  Rams  – –  Mediocre career at best
• 2011:  Cam Newton  Panthers  – – NFL MVP in 2015; an excellent choice.
• 2012:  Andrew Luck  Colts  – –  Pro Bowl 4 times; retired early; excellent choice.
• 2013:  Eric Fisher  Chiefs  – –  Solid performer; a good selection
• 2014:  Jadeveon Clowney  Texans – –  Good not great player; a decent selection
• 2015:  Jameis Winston  Bucs  – –  Never lived up to his press clippings.
• 2016:  Jared Goff  Rams  – –  Team gave up on him after 5 years.
• 2017:  Myles Garrett Browns  – –  Pro Bowl twice already; a good selection.
• 2018:  Baker Mayfield  Browns  – – Jury is still out…
• 2019:  Kyler Murray  Cards  – –  Jury is still out…
• 2020:  Joe Burrow  Bengals  – –  Jury is still out…

Considering that this list represents THE BEST college football player available in that year according to the drafting gurus for about half of the NFL, I do not see nearly enough “excellent selections” or “game changer for the franchise” entries on this list.  I guess it is nice to have the chance to draft THE BEST player available in a given year, but the execution of that option indicates to me that it is not nearly as tangibly valuable as it is made out to be.

We shall soon see what Joe Douglas does with that picnic basket full of picks and what Robert Saleh does to turn those guys into NFL caliber players.

Every year, I take my watching of regular season college basketball games plus the tournament games to come up with a “Sleeper Pick” for the NBA Draft.  If I said I had even a 20% hit rate on those “Sleeper Picks” I would be stretching the truth. There were two “Sleeper Picks” that turned out well; Fred Van Vliet has been a solid point guard for the Raptors over the past 5 seasons and Matisse Thybulle has been a valuable bench player for the Sixers since the acquired him in 2019.  Undaunted by the possibility for continued embarrassment, I have 3 names to offer here – – the reason being that two of them are underclassmen and may not enter this year’s draft.

1. Dexter Dennis – Wichita St.:  He is an excellent defender particularly out at the 3-point line.  He is a junior and has eligibility left.
2. Neemias Queta – Utah St.:  he is listed at 7’0” and 245 lbs. and I believe that.  He is an excellent ball handler and interior passer.  His offensive game needs some work, but it is hard to “teach” a 7-foot player to dribble the ball effectively.  He is a junior and has eligibility left.
3. Lucas Williamson – Loyola-Chicago:  He has above average skills as a ball handler, shooter, defender and rebounder.  However, he is not “great” in any of those dimensions…  He is a senior and will be draft-eligible this year.

Finally, apropos of nothing, here is a Tweet from humorist Brad Dickson formerly with the Omaha World-Herald:

“There’s a truck in my neighbor’s driveway reading ‘Two Men and a Snake.’ It’s either a plumbing contractor or the world’s worst petting zoo.”

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

 

 

Congratulations to Baylor as the NCAA men’s basketball national champions for 2021.  Their win over previously undefeated Gonzaga last night was dominant and authoritative; that was not a “fluky win”; the better team on the court won the game.

With a little less than 12 minutes to play in the first half, I wrote on my notepad that Baylor led by 15 points, was totally dominant and that the “winner tonight is not in doubt”.  There were two important areas where Baylor dominated:

1. Three-point shooting:  Baylor made its first six tries in a row and shot 10 for 23 from outside.  Gonzaga hit only 5 of 17 tries.
2. Team defense: Gonzaga got few open shots all night long; and uncharacteristically, they turned the ball over 14 times.

People today lament the extinction of species; they say that the white rhinoceros is about to join the passenger pigeon and the wooly mammoth as things you can only see in a museum after a lot of taxidermy.  I want to report that something else is about to be declared extinct:

• The three-second violation:  On one play in the first half, I counted out 6 seconds in the lane and was halfway to 7 seconds with no whistle.  In the second half, I had another count at 5 seconds.

When Roy Williams retired, folks were wondering who – within the UNC basketball family – would get the call to succeed him.  I mistakenly wrote here that the UNC tradition of naming former players or assistant coaches started with Dean Smith; that is wrong.  The tradition started when Frank McGuire left UNC and his assistant – – Dean Smith – – took over the program.  Well, now we know; Hubert Davis has been hired as the head basketball coach at UNC.

Davis played 4 years at UNC graduating in 1992.  He played in the NBA for 12 seasons and has been an assistant under Roy Williams at UNC since 2012.  He is the first Black man to be the head coach at UNC and joins a noticeably short list of Black head coaches at any of the “blue-blood basketball programs” in the US.  If my “blue-blood list” contains Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, UNC and UCLA, then Davis is only the fourth Black man to have a head coaching job at any of these schools.  Tubby Smith was the head coach at Kentucky more than 40 years ago and UCLA was led by Larry Farmer and then Walt Hazzard in the 1980s.  That’s it, folks; that’s the list.

Another big announcement from yesterday was the NY Jets trading QB, Sam Darnold to the Carolina Panthers.  In return, the Jets will receive:

• A 6^th round pick this year.
• A 2^nd round pick and a 4^th round pick next year.

Considering that Darnold was the third pick overall in the 2018 Draft, that seems like a meager return for the Jets, and it puts them squarely in the business of drafting a QB in the upcoming Draft.  Currently the two QBs on the Jets’ roster are James Morgan and Mike White and you are free to ask in both cases, “Who’s he?”

The Panthers’ QB situation is even more interesting because of this trade.  Last year, the Panthers signed Teddy Bridgewater as a free agent to a 3-year contract worth $63M.  Bridgewater did not light up the league – – but he did not throw up on his shoes either.  So, is he still the starter there or has the Panthers’ braintrust decided to move on?  Bridgewater’s contract should not make it difficult to move him if that is what the Panthers decide to do.

To some extent, I think Darnold has gotten a bum rap in NY.  Hear me out; I am not going to try to make him into some tragic figure who has been wronged for his entire career.  Sam Darnold has started 38 games in 3 seasons with the Jets; his record in those games is 13-25.  He has missed 10 games over the course of his career and – – if I have counted correctly – – the Jets are 0-10 when someone else starts at QB.  My conclusion is that he was a young QB learning the pro game on a bad team and that he made them significantly “less bad” when he was on the field as opposed to when he was on the sidelines.

I recognize that storyline will not play in NYC – – but I think the Panthers got a good deal here if what they choose to do is to work with Darnold and Bridgewater as a tandem so that both men can improve their skills.  Sam Darnold will be all of 24 years old when he reports to the Panthers’ minicamp in June; it is too early to give up on him as a bust.

Fernando Tatis, Jr. injured himself swinging the bat yesterday.  He took what anyone would call a “healthy swing” and collapsed in pain at the plate; he was removed from the game and subsequent examination determined that he had a “shoulder subluxation” as a result of that swing and miss.  A subluxation is a partial dislocation; with that swing and miss, Tatis managed to partially take the ball of the ball and socket joint that is the human shoulder and partially remove the ball from the socket.

My knowledge base for orthopedic injuries has now been exhausted but it would surely seem to me that this kind of injury would take more than a couple of days to heal – – particularly since when he returns to the game Tatis, Jr, would be swinging a bat at pitches as a mandatory part of his play.  This is not good news for Padres’ fans…

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

“Working title for a documentary about MLB managers’ worst umpiring nightmare: ‘Angel’s In The Infield’.”

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

 

 

Before I get to Saturday night’s Final Four games and tonight’s championship game, let me begin with baseball history.  Last week, I mentioned that MLB will be experimenting with some rule changes in minor league games and two of the rules seek to increase the number of base stealing attempts to add more action to games.  I said MLB needed more players like Tony Gwynn who stole more bases in 5 separate seasons than he struck out in those seasons.  I received an email from the reader in Houston which provided historical perspective here:

            “Talking about small ball, this may be comparing apples and oranges, but HOFer 5’6″ ‘Sliding Billy’ Hamilton who played mostly in the latter part of the 19th century with the KC Cowboys of the American Association and the Phillies and Boston Beaneaters of the NL had 914 stolen bases and only 362 strikeouts over a career spanning 14 seasons. He had more stolen bases than strikeouts in every season, but his last. On a side note, he scored over 100 runs in 11 seasons, including the MLB record of 198 in 1894.

“Please note the modern steal rule was put into place in 1898. Before then, any time a runner took an extra base (such as advancing to third base from first on a single) he was awarded a stolen base. But even after the revised recount, he still had more stolen bases than strikeouts during his MLB career.

“For most of us, it was Luis Aparicio who heralded in a new era of base stealing in the 1950s, an era that saw the feats of Maury Wills, who broke Ty Cobb’s single season record in 1962. Cobb had the long-standing career mark of 892, which seemed unapproachable until Lou Brock came along. Brock surpassed Cobb’s career total in 1977. Breaking Cobb’s mark suddenly brought “Sliding Billy’s” name back into the news. When Brock surpassed Cobb, suddenly there were some of us students of the game who rose to say, ‘Not so fast, my friend. How about ‘Sliding Billy’.’

“Hamilton was in the record books with his 937 steals, even if set apart as a pre-1900 figure. And the pre-1900 barely explained his total. As I mentioned above, from 1886 to 1897, stolen bases were awarded for any number of base running advances. Still, no one ran up a total like ‘Sliding Billy’ did. He was the best at what he did; the best of his era. In his first two years with the Phillies, 1890 and 1891, he had 102 and 111 steals, (in only 123 and 133 games, respectively), even as altered by modern research.

“Apart from his superlatives in stolen bases (his total was revised from 937 to 914 by MLB about 40 years ago), he had a .344 career batting average and a career OBP of .455.”

As always, thank you to the reader in Houston for historical perspective here.  I will now amend my remarks from last week to say that MLB needs more players like Tony Gwynn AND “Sliding Billy” Hamilton…

Moving along to the Final Four games.  There’s yin and there’s yang; there’s rationalism and there’s empiricism; there’s happy and there’s sad.  Saturday night I saw two college basketball games and one was exciting and interesting while the other was a dud.  Baylor/Houston was the dud; it was a mismatch from the start.  Baylor led by 25 at the half; then they took their foot off the gas and waltzed home never being threatened.  I made two notes during this game:

1. The way Baylor is playing in the first half, they could beat the Indiana Pacers tonight.
2. Lots of pregame focus on Houston’s Dejon Jarreau but he has been neutralized here.

The Gonzaga/UCLA game was exactly the opposite; it was well-played; it was close from start to finish; it went to overtime and would have gone to a second overtime but for the half-court buzzer beater that sent Gonzaga on to meet Baylor tonight.  [Aside:  I would characterize Jalen Suggs half-court shot as “an answered prayer”.]  I made three notes during the game:

1. These officials are not calling traveling violations tonight – – on either team.
2. Johnny Juzang is ready for the NBA.  He pushes off every time he drives to his right and he pushes off about 50% of the time he drives to his left.
3. Pregame I heard/read that Cody Riley would have trouble guarding Drew Timme.  Riley looks awfully good to me.

The lines on tonight’s game are a bit surprising to me.  Gonzaga is a 4.5-point favorite which is not a surprise.  However, Gonzaga is -200 on the Money Line and Baylor is +175.  Both of those numbers seem big in an absolute sense given the short spread on the game.

I did not see nearly as much college basketball this year as compared to previous years; but given what I saw, I thought Gonzaga, Baylor and Michigan were the three best teams.  When Michigan forward, Isaiah Livers went down with an injury, I downgraded my opinion of Michigan; I believe the two best teams are on stage tonight.

Both coaches must be commended for the way they have grown their programs.  Mark Few has been at Gonzaga since the 1999/2000 season; his “worst season record” in that time has been 23-11; overall, the Zags under his leadership have gone 630-124 (.836).  Gonzaga was a solid program when he took over;   The Zags had gone to a post season tournament in 5 of the previous 6 season under Dan Monson and Dan Fitzgerald; Mark Few took it from there.

Scott Drew faced an entirely different situation when he went to Baylor.  The program had just gone through the “Dave Bliss Affair” where one player murdered another player and Coach Bliss tried to cover it all up.  I wrote about that mess back in 2003; here is a link to that rant if you want to refresh your memory.

When Scott Drew took the job, more than a few folks were convinced that he was committing career suicide.  Notwithstanding the fact that he had only 7 scholarships to give out for his first two years at Baylor, he had the Bears back in a post-season tournament in his fourth year there.  His overall record at Baylor is 353-213 (.624) despite going 17-53 in his first three years at the helm.

Two good teams and two good coaches tonight.  Sounds perfect to me…

Finally, one of the teams – and its fans – will end tonight “heartbroken”.  Therefore, let me close today with that definition from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Heartbroken:  A state of overwhelming sadness; most commonly experienced by adolescents who do not yet have the emotional distance to grasp just how many more times they are going to get screwed over like this by the time they are twenty-five.”

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

 

 

Well, that did not take long.  COVID-19 exhibited its ability to impact the MLB season on opening day.  The Nats/Mets game was postponed because of a positive COVID test within the Nats organization and subsequent contact tracing implicating five players who were in close contact with the positive player.  According to reports, that was what got the game called but subsequent reports said that the Nats now have at least three players who have tested positive.  Based on negotiated agreement between MLB and MLBPA the names of players who test positive or are under scrutiny per the COVID protocols will not be revealed, confirmed or denied.  However, if indeed the Nats have a minimum of three players who are positive for the virus, the likelihood that they will be playing at full strength any time soon is small.

Yesterday, I mentioned that MLB will be experimenting with a couple of rule changes in the minor leagues this year with an eye towards increasing the number of base stealing attempts.  Those comments prompted an email from a former colleague who provided an interesting set of stats.  Here is the pertinent part of his email:

“Baseball wants stolen bases to go up and strikeouts to go down … What they need are more players like Tony Gwynn.  Gwynn was in the league for 20 years and in 5 of those years he had more stolen bases than strikeouts.”

Tony Gwynn was a great player, but I never realized that, so I went to baseball-reference.com to check and my former colleague is 100% correct; the seasons in question here are 1984-87 and 1989.  For his 20-year career Gwynn had 319 stolen bases and 434 strikeouts.

The NHL fired one of its officials, Tim Peel, for a comment he made within range of hot microphone saying that he was looking for a way to penalize the Nashville Predators early in a game against the Detroit Red Wings.  The penalty appeared to be a ticky-tack call and after the fact the hot microphone recorded Peel saying:

“It wasn’t much, but I wanted to get a [bleeping] penalty against Nashville early.”

Peel has been officiating NHL games since 1999; there is no way I can convince myself that he failed to know two things:

1. That sort of comment must not be made even in jest.
2. If he actually had that thought in his mind, it was time for him to find another line of work.

I have mentioned here several times that I did a lot of basketball officiating many years ago.  I learned about the problems caused by snide comments the hard way.  Let me recount the story here.

This was a local recreation league game for boys 11 and 12 years old.  I walked into the gym and saw two teams warming up – – one wearing green shirts and the other wearing a different color that I do not remember.  I took off my jacket and saw the guy who was in charge of the recreation league sitting by the scorer’s table, so I went over to say hello.  I also said something very close to this:

“So, what is the line on tonight’s game?  Do we have our money down on Green or ‘whatever the other color was’?  Looks like a good night to cash a bet…”

His response was something along the lines of:

“Green is the play tonight…”

Now in the exact moment that we had that exchange, the mother of a player on the other team happened to be walking by and overheard us.  She thought we were being serious and became incensed that there would be a situation where the referees and the league organizers were “fixing games”.  She said she would report us to the city officials who oversaw the entire recreation department.  I tried to tell her that it was a joke and that there was no “fix” in for the night and that I did not know of any local bookies who would take bets on 11- and 12-year-old boys basketball games.  None of that allayed her fears; when the Green team did win the game that night, I knew this would not just dry up and blow away.  Sure enough, the city recreation director called the league organizer and me in for a “fact-finding meeting”.

It all worked out in the end for me because the absurdity of the scenario I had painted in my snarky remark was a sufficient defense that no hanky-panky was going on.  But I learned a different lesson then about what an official can say about the game in front of him and/or the game he did the night before.

Tim Peel lost his job with the NHL which is about as severe a penalty as possible in this matter.  Unfortunately, I have to think it is justified because even a hint of motivation on the part of an official to make a call that is based on anything other than the events just witnessed by the official strikes at the integrity of the contest.  The NHL lives on because its players, coaches and fans do not believe the games are fixed; the NHL business model does not coincide with the WWE business model so the NHL cannot tolerate “complicit officials”.  I have no idea if Tim Peel’s words and actions struck at the heart of the NHL’s game integrity, but the NHL cannot take a chance on something like that.

Roy Williams announced his retirement from the position of head coach for the UNC men’s basketball team yesterday.  Williams is in the Hall of Fame hanging up his whistle after 33 seasons and 903 victories.  UNC basketball has been a program that has maintained a lineage back to Dean Smith who started there as an assistant coach in 1958 and then was the head coach from 1961 to 1997.  Since Smith retired, the UNC head coaches have been:

• Bill Guthridge – – longtime assistant coach under Dean Smith
• Matt Doherty – – played under Dean Smith for four years at UNC.
• Roy Williams – – assistant coach under Dean Smith for 10 years

I have no inside information on who might be on the list to replace Coach Williams but noting the “pedigree aspect” of UNC hirings here, I will only mention that Jerry Stackhouse is in the coaching business at Vandy…

Finally, just as COVID-19 inserted itself in toe the MLB season yesterday, the virus has also maintained a presence in the NBA regular season as well.  Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times took note of one such intrusion:

“The Warriors were left without any big men for a game against Memphis after Kevin Looney joined James Wiseman on the NBA’s COVID-19 restricted list.

“Obviously they’re not centers for disease control.”

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

 

 

Well, that did not take long…  After setting the table with a long-term CBA in place and new long-term broadcast rights deals to fatten the bank accounts signed, sealed and delivered, the NFL announced yesterday that its regular season will now be expanded to 17 games.  One need not to have been in training to become the modern Oracle of Delphi to have seen that coming.  The NFL’s 16-game schedule has been in place for more than 40 years and it is formulaic to the point that one could project the structure of the league schedule decades in advance.  But it is not so easy to figure out how that would work with an odd number of games in the regular season.  Here is my understanding – – with the proviso that I have a track record of getting some of the details wrong in these sorts of complicated maneuverings:

• There will be no changes made to the basic 16-gaqme schedule rotation that has been in place for years; the only change will be in how the 17^th game is woven into the schedule rotation.
• The 17^th game will be an inter-conference game and it will be a “standings based” pairing based on the finish from last year. First place team in Division A plays first place team in Division B and etc.  It will pair divisions from each conference on a rotating basis and in one year all the AFC teams will get an extra home game while in the following year all the NFC teams will get an extra home game based on the 17^th game addition.

Here are three questions I have about this announcement that I have not been able to track down:

1. If a player has a contract that calls for him to earn $1.6M this year (for 16 games that is conveniently $100K per game), will he earn $1.7M this year because the number of games increased?
2. Has the “increased inventory” of games been negotiated into the prices that the NFL’s “broadcast partners” will pay to the league to carry the regular season games?  Or … will those revenues expand by 6% over what was previously announced?
3. Will there be a reduction in the number of meaningless Exhibition Games to pay lip service to player health and safety?

Remember, follow the money…

The Final Four have established themselves for next weekend.  Here are my notes from the games that put those teams in that company:

• Oregon St./Houston:  Houston is dominating the boards offensively and defensively in the first half; Oregon St. is playing like a 12-seed tonight.  Houston is denying the ball to Ethan Thomas; Oregon St. continues to wonder what else to do on offense.  Houston doubled-up Oregon St. at the half and it really was not that close.  Oregon St. rallies furiously to close the score to 2 points – – but not enough.  The difference was Houston getting 19 offensive rebounds in the game and the fact the Oregon St. shot 11 for 20 from the foul line.  Houston won ugly; Oregon St. lost ugly.
• Baylor/Arkansas:  Baylor’s offense is run by and through point guard, Davion Mitchell.  He committed 2 personal fouls in the first 4 minutes and got his third foul with about 9 minutes to go in the first half with Baylor ahead 33-18.  Arkansas closed to 46-38 at the half; Mitchell on the floor is key in the second half.  The second half is a game of runs; Baylor made the last run and won by 9 points but they had to sweat it out to do so.
• Gonzaga/USC:  Neither of the Mobley brothers can play a lick of defense; if Evan Mobley is the PAC-12 Player of the Year, it is amazing that PAC-12 teams did so well in the tournament.  USC is trying to run with Gonzaga and keep up with them; that is not working and will not work; the Zags are clearly the faster team.  “Seems like no changes were made at halftime for USC so the outcome is pretty obvious.”  That comment was noted at the “under-16 TV time-out”.
• Michigan/UCLA:  Michigan is not playing the same offense that got them to this game; no inside passing and little cutting to the basket.  Other than Juzang for UCLA, no one on the court can make a shot to save his life.  “Ugly game, team that makes the last mistake will lose” (Comment was noted at halftime.)  Here is how the game ended…  UCLA was up by 1 point with 19 seconds; Michigan had the ball.  Michigan gets an open-look 3-point shot and misses followed by a missed put back.  UCLA got the rebound and was fouled with 6.3 seconds remaining.  Bruins hit one of the foul shots; to lead by 2 and Michigan calls time out.  One more shot fails, and Michigan loses…  UCLA won ugly; Michigan lost ugly.

My respect for the law is matched by my contempt for legislators who write the laws.  There always seem to be ways for the laws they create to be circumvented by “folks on the inside” when that becomes convenient.  The latest example I read about pertains to Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) dodging a Tennessee state law regarding nepotism in hiring for state employees.  Here is the deal:

• The son of the head football coach was hired to be the tight ends coach.  This had a whiff of nepotism associated with it.
• The solution was for the Athletic Director to declare that it was he – the AD – and not the head coach who hired the son to be the assistant coach.
• The AD explained that they have a process within the university by which this can be approved, and they exercised that process.

Isn’t that convenient…?

[Aside:  The kid may be the best Tight Ends coach in the history of football but that does not remove the stink associated with the reports about this hiring process.]

Finally, the legal loophole exploited in that last item recalls one of my favorite quotes from Mark Twain:

“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctively native American criminal class except Congress.”

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

 

 

Howard Schnellenberger died over the weekend.  His life/career in football demonstrates an amazing association with some of the greatest players and coaches in the game and he specialized in building college football programs:

• He played college football under Bear Bryant.
• He was an assistant coach under Bear Bryant.
• He recruited Joe Namath and Kenny Stabler to Alabama
• He was an assistant coach to George Allen.
• He was an assistant coach to Don Shula – during the Dolphins’ undefeated season.
• He resurrected a moribund football program at the University of Miami.
• He resurrected a moribund football program at Louisville.
• He built the Florida Atlantic football program from the ground up.

Rest in peace, Howard Schnellenberger.

Moving on …  For those of you keeping score at home, Deshaun Watson now has 19 female massage therapists/trainers who have accused him of sexual misconduct.  There are dozens of reports out there describing the allegations for anyone who has not kept up with this story and is interested; Google is  your friend.  I will not even try to dip a toe into the smarmy puddle of what he is alleged to have done; I will simply note that if these allegations are true, he is a young man in need of significant psychological/psychiatric treatment.  Even I know that – – and I am not in the business of “things psychological”.

What I wonder about is how the NFL is going to deal with all of this as a business entity.  The league has its “Personal Conduct Policy”, and it has wielded it in the past.  The policy seeks to protect the NFL from “conduct detrimental to the league and professional football”.

It took some careful reading for me to realize that there need not be a legal finding of criminal activity or for there to be a successful civil suit against a player for the policy to be called into play.  As I was chatting with a neighbor who is an attorney – and a football fan – he pointed out to me that Ezekiel Elliott’s 6-game suspension was a result of imposing the Personal Conduct Policy sanctions on Elliott without any evidence of his guilt in a courtroom.

So, the investigative work to be done to prepare the Commissioner for his finding(s) related to the Personal Conduct policy is closely related to the legal status of the matters.  In a criminal case, there are court documents that need to be presented as evidence and much of that will be public record; in other words, the police and the prosecutors – – the good guys on Law and Order – – will do a lot of the legwork for the league.  So far, the Deshaun Watson allegations have remained in civil court and the nineteen women accusers are known as Jane Doe #1, Jane Doe #2 …  Reports say that their filings are signed only by their attorney; so for now, there is no possibility of accusers’ names leaking out .  I guess that puts the ball squarely in the court of NFL Security to get out there and do some of its own investigating.

And once I think about that circumstance, I wonder how long it will be until  the Commish will have any facts in hand on which to base his judgment.  Consider:

• The NFL has been investigating allegations against the Washington Football Team’s front office regarding sexual harassment and a “toxic culture” and that investigation is now in its ninth month.  The accusers who came forward were known; there are pictures/videos related to some of the voyeuristic allegations; the NFL investigators knew from Day One where to begin.
• According to the Houston Police Department, there have been no criminal charges filed in the Deshaun Watson situation.  So, the NFL investigators will need the cooperation of the attorney representing these nineteen women simply to know who they are so the NFL can begin to do what it is that they think they need to do.  Why do I think that is unlikely to happen?

Unless there is a major sea change in this entire matter, I cannot see any way for this to be even close to “resolved” by the time the 2021 NFL season starts.  NFL Security does not have subpoena power and cannot compel testimony from anyone; it would seem to me that the league will need to rely on public reporting of these incidents for much of its information until and unless one or more of the civil cases goes to trial.  If there were to be out-of-court settlements in the case(s), I cannot imagine that the settlement(s) would not include non-disclosure agreements as a condition of the settlement.

• [Aside:  Given the grandiose statements of the attorneys on both sides of this matter so far, I wish NFL Security good luck in making any determinations based on news releases and reporting.]

Commissioner Roger Goodell has a safety zone here; there is something called the Commissioner’s Exempt List; here is what it means in simple terms:

• The player – or coach or owner or staff member – placed on this list cannot interact with his/her team until removed from the list.  That means no meetings, no practices, no games …  You get the idea.
• At the same time, the player – or coach or staff member – continues to be paid while on the list so that (s)he is not penalized monetarily for being under investigation prior to any sort of conclusive findings of that investigation.

If my mental construct of this situation is correct, Deshaun Watson may be barred from playing NFL football in 2021 while this matter moves toward its conclusion.  That has particular relevance because Deshaun Watson has been publicly demanding that the Texans trade him; he says he will not play for the Texans and the Texans say they have no interest in trading him.  That confrontation is ongoing and is orthogonal to the sexual harassment allegations by these 19 women.  In a rational marketplace, Watson would be a sought-after commodity; he would be a QB upgrade for about 75% of the league.  However, he is of no value to any team in 2021 if he is on the Commissioner’s Exempt List.

This story has all the appearances of one that will be around for more than a few months…

Finally, the sexual misconduct allegations above reminded me of a quip attributed to Woody Allen – – no stranger to allegations of this stripe:

“Is sex dirty?  Only if it’s done right.”

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

 

 

Normally, we would know the Final Four on this Monday on the calendar, but the modified scheduling this year only gives us the Elite 8 as of today; it will not be until Wednesday morning that we have the Final Four.  The 12 games that cut the NCAA field from 16 to 4 are usually the prime cuts from the Tournament.

• The first two rounds are all about quantity; 48 games happen to select the Sweet 16.  One feels gluttonous while taking them in – – and truth be told, a quarter to a third of those games are not particularly entertaining.
• The Final Four and the Finals always seem to find contestants that make the games interesting.  But there are only 3 such games; I always feel as if I just had the appetizer and there is no main course to come.
• But the 12 games from Sweet 16 to Final Four hit the “sweet spot.  Most of the games are good; the teams tend to be ones playing well and there are enough of them to make me feel satisfied.

Given that everything in college basketball this year has been topsy-turvey to say the least, I was worried that the games over the weekend would be dogs.  They were not; even the ones where the final score was not close were entertaining for much of the time.  Here are some notes I took during the games:

• Loyola-Chicago/Oregon St.:  Great defense by both teams in the first 15 minutes; total score in that time is 29 points.  This is a totally different sport than NBA basketball.

[Aside:  Interesting that the promos for NBA basketball during these college basketball telecasts are for the upcoming NBA playoffs.  Those will start in 8 weeks, but the NBA hypes them instead of the 8-weeks’ worth of games between now and then.  Tells you what you need to know about the NBA’s view of its own regular season games.]

• Villanova/Baylor:  Seeing Jay Wright in sweats instead of in thousand-dollar Armani suits is simply wrong.  Defense dominates here and the game is entertaining.  Villanova is good and Baylor is better.
• Oral Roberts/Arkansas:  Arkansas has better athletes and much better subs off the bench.  ORU has to scramble on defense to keep this close.
• Syracuse/Houston:  Syracuse needs its 3-point shots to fall to win this game; not happening in 1^st half.  In the second half, Houston was almost playing “Box-and-1” on Buddy Boeheim.
• Creighton/Gonzaga:  Creighton is trying to run with the Zags and match them shot for shot; good luck with that.  Game is theoretically in doubt at halftime but after 6 minutes of 2^nd half, there is no doubt who is moving on.

[Aside:  I was most pleasantly surprised to see Ian Eagle and Jim Spanarkel on the call for this game.  I like the two of them as a tandem better than any other current college basketball broadcast team.  Thank you, CBS…]

• Florida St./Michigan:   Michigan plays old-school basketball; they work the ball around to get it inside for a really good shot.  Michigan has 3 big men who are good passers and good inside shooters.  Florida St. offense today is basically 5 separate games of 1-on-1 basketball.

[Aside:  I also liked the fact that both coaches avoid histrionics on every possession and they also accept some of the calls that go against their team without making it seem as if they are suffering more than Job.]

• Alabama/UCLA:  Herbert Jones was certainly the most over-hyped player in this game.  The game went to OT and he missed 3 free-throws in the final minute and a half – – helping Alabama shoot 11 for 25 from the free throw line in the game.  A team that shoots that way on foul shots does not deserve to win an overtime game.
• Oregon/USC:  USC defense was the difference in the first half.  USC won the game on cruise control.

When Texas lost to Abilene Christian, I said here that the Texas fanboys might be moved to buy out Shaka Smart.  Well, Coach Smart beat any of them to the punch and signed himself out of Texas to take the head coaching job at Marquette.  The glamor-factor at Marquette may not be at the same level as at Texas, but the fact is that Texas is a football school and winning a half-dozen NCAA Tournaments in ten years will not make it a basketball school.  Marquette is a basketball school.  If Marquette even fields a football team at the Division II or Division III level, I do not know about it.

Greg Cote of the Miami Herald had this observation; it tells me all I need to know about the subject:

“New Zealand defeated Italy in the final of America’s Cup sailing in Auckland. Home-water advantage?”

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

“Tigerleg has supplanted dogleg as the more currently discussed golf term.”

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

 

 

It was about fifty years ago when Willie Nelson sang:

“Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys…”

About 5 years ago, a narrative began that football was going to go the way of the dodo bird because mothers would not let their babies grow up to be football players for fear of CTE. I never bought into that narrative and I think it is now evident that the demise of football in the US is highly unlikely for the next decade or so.  The NFL and its “broadcast partners” – now to include Amazon and other streaming services – have signed a 10-year deal that will drop a total of $113B into the NFL’s coffers.  Those “broadcast partners” do not see the NFL drying up and blowing away, and nor do I.

Moreover, roughly half of the money involved in those TV deals will flow to NFL players per the terms of the CBA between the league and the players’ union.  That means there are significant financial incentives for kids to aspire to be part of the NFL for at least another decade.  If indeed “money talks”, the dollars involved here are most assertive in declaring the continued existence of the NFL and a willing labor force for the enterprise.

These new broadcast deals between the networks and the NFL begin in 2023; analysts say that the new deals cost the networks twice what the current deals cost; I assume that is a correct analysis.  When I first heard that the NFL was going to ask for that kind of an increase, I wondered why the networks would accede to such an increase.  However, the negotiations went smoothly and quickly so the networks must see value there.  Here are data:

• Eight of the top ten most watched TV programs in 2020 were football games (7 were NFL games and the other was the CFP championship game).
• The two “non-football programs” on the list for 2020 ranked 7^th and 10^th.
• Notwithstanding reports that Super Bowl ratings were down for 2021, the game between the Bucs and the Chiefs had 96 million viewers.  By comparison, The Oscars in 2020 had 23 million viewers.

I have said for years that the NFL and the NFLPA need to work together because their joint mission is to produce the most popular and most lucrative television series ever.  As long as the league and the union keep the wheels rolling, the dollars will continue to flow.  The two sides may squabble over the “revenue split” or over some aspects of “working conditions” but it is hard for me to imagine any single issue on either side of the bargaining table that is worth turning off the spigot there.

So, is there anything new in the broadcast rights deal to justify doubling the cost to the networks?  Here are some of the provisions that have been reported; you make the call:

• There will be 2 games on the Saturday of the final week of the regular season on ESPN.  That will happen this year before the new deal goes into effect.  Importantly, the NFL intends to put “playoff relevant” games in at least one of those Saturday time slots meaning the NFL is going to flex-schedule games from day-to-day in addition to flexing games from a time slot on Sunday to another time slot on Sunday.
• Those Saturday games will become a fixture in the new scheduling arrangements for the new TV deals AND there will be flexing opportunities for ESPN and its Monday Night Football package.  Flexing for Monday Night Football was not available in the current deal.
• ESPN will get three annual Monday Night Football double-headers.  Currently, there is a MNF double-header for the opening week of the season but none to follow after that.  Starting in 2023, there will be three such scheduled events.
• FOX chose not to bid to continue with Thursday Night Football, but Amazon jumped in with both feet.  FOX will continue through 2023 and Amazon will stream those telecasts as well; then it is all Amazon after that.  I also read a report that said if Amazon grows the Thursday Night Football audience sufficiently, Amazon could claim a wildcard playoff game that would stream exclusively on Amazon.
• ESPN+ and Paramount+ and Peacock streaming services will all participate to a small extent in the new deals.  ESPN+ will have exclusive rights to one of the NFL’s “International Games”; Peacock also gets an exclusive game for its service.
• ABC will get 2 Super Bowl game telecasts between now and 2033.  ABC and ESPN are part of Disney Corp; the NFL does not want to put the Super Bowl on a cable network so count ABC’s turn in the barrel here as a tip of the hat to ESPN.

Someone needs to wave a tiny caution flag here.  There is a small measure of danger here involving over-exposure.  Adding Saturday games and adding a 17^th game to the regular season and adding Monday double-headers will put more games on as national events.  I use the word “event” there very purposefully.  I believe that one of the fundamental reasons that professional football overtook MLB as the “nation’s pastime” is this one:

• There are 162 baseball games in a season (2430 games in total) so that any given game is an “occurrence”.
• There are only 16 NFL games in a regular season (256 games in total), and they are spaced apart by a week meaning that each game is an “event”.

The NFL does not want to over-expose its product and lose the aura of “event-ness” for its regular season games.  The guys in the executive suites need to maintain awareness that every good thing can be overdone.  I am not predicting the demise of professional football here nor am I hoping for such an outcome.  But someone somewhere needs to think about that issue to make sure it never becomes a real issue.

Finally, let me close with an observation made by H.L. Mencken that relates to my tiny caution flag here:

“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.”

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

 

 

Where there is a lack of clarity, people tend to interpolate or extrapolate to fill in the gaps; in common parlance, this practice is referred to as “connecting the dots.”  According to reports yesterday, the NFL has allowed Danny Boy Snyder to borrow $450M to buy out the three minority partners who were suing him.  That confrontation had gotten well into the realm of churlishness with one side accusing the other of “extortion” and the other side responding with allegations of “financial shenanigans.”  Lacking clarity in the matter, I am perfectly willing to believe both sides there.

However, the action of the NFL yesterday to render all that acrimony moot causes me to wonder why the league chose to do what it did and how did the timing come to be.  Lacking clarity in that arena, I need to do a bit of interpolating and extrapolating – – sometimes meaning that I put two-and- two together and come up with five.

There is a second shabby set of circumstances ongoing now regarding Danny Boy Snyder.  It was about 8 months ago that the Washington Post published a report by Washington cheerleaders about sexual harassment and a “toxic culture” in the team Front Office.  Two individuals were fired; the “Communications Guru” chose to retire; more women came forward with additional charges; first the team hired a law firm to “investigate” and then the NFL took over that “investigation”.  That was eight months ago; the report of the investigation is still not “available”.

There has been plenty of speculation about the contents of that investigative report to the point that some have wondered if the findings were so sordid that it would cause the league to force Danny Boy Snyder to sell the team.  As  long-term resident of the DC suburbs, I can assure anyone who is reading this that fanboys around here would prefer Hannibal Lecter to own the team if that could be arranged.  The NFL’s action yesterday not only signals that Danny Boy Snyder will continue to own the team, but that he will own about 81% of the team along with the minority shares belonging to his mother and his sister.

Now on to some “dot connecting”.  I cannot believe that the NFL would have cleared the way for that situation to obtain if there was even a 1% chance that the findings of that investigative report suggested that Danny Boy Snyder be forced to sell the team.  The NFL can be ham-handed and stubborn, but the NFL is not stupid.  As I understand the NFL Bylaws, the league can force an owner to sell his franchise if that owner engages in “conduct detrimental to the league.”  Here is the important aspect of that provision to force a sale:

• The way the determination is made regarding “conduct detrimental to the league” is to have 75% of the owners vote to force a sale on that basis.

So, my first extrapolation here is that the investigative report which has not been available to the public is known to the higher-ups in the NFL if not in full at least to the point that the major findings have been summarized there.  The league mavens have counted heads and are certain that there are not nearly the required 24 votes to force a sale of the Washington Football Team.

That first extrapolation leads to another question that lacks clarity at the moment.

• What circumstances have led the owners’ votes to fall out the way that is indicated here?

I can think of 3 possibilities; I am certain there are others:

1. The findings of the report indicate to a sufficient degree of certainty that Danny Boy Snyder is not guilty of anything more than mismanagement of his “Front Office toxic culture” and that the allegations made can be resolved.
2. The other owners are looking at the newly negotiated broadcast rights deals and cannot see how the 8 months of bad publicity surrounding this situation has done any degree of “detriment to the league”.
3. The other owners would not want themselves to be under microscopic scrutiny with regard to the behaviors of male team employees regarding female team employees over the past several decades.  And if there were such scrutiny applied, the other owners would not like to have a “forced franchise sale” on the books as a precedent.

All three of these conclusions require “dot connecting” meaning there is uncertainty in all of them.  The first one can be confirmed or denied with the release of the investigative report with only minimal redactions.  I will be surprised if the NFL does that.  I suspect that the NFL would not want to take the chance that there is a demonstrable error of fact in that report which would cast doubt on its findings and reopen this issue(s).  The NFL is not in the business of risk taking and that course of action carries a risk with it.

The second possibility above is very real.  Broadcast rights have – according to reports – just about doubled for the next 10 years or so.  When the last team sold, the reported price was approximately 50% higher than the value of the franchise as estimated by Forbes.  The owners can easily convince themselves and their minority partners – if there are any – that things are looking up.

Regarding that third possibility, my gut tells me that some other owners saw the allegations made against the Front Office of the WTFs and thought to themselves:

• There but for the Grace of God, goes our organization.

Just about the only aspect of this situation that does not require any extrapolation or interpolation is the fact that the allegations made by women to the Washington Post were published a little more than 8 months ago – – and the clock continues to run…

Finally, regarding the issue of sexual harassment – – allegations of which set in motion much of what I have discussed today – – here is an interesting assessment from Senator Amy Klobuchar (D- MN):

“I have a dream that, one day, maybe we’ll have more women in the Senate than there are victims of Harvey Weinstein’s harassment.”

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

 

 

Elgin Baylor died yesterday.  He was a great collegiate and NBA player in the late 50s through the early 70s; he had the misfortune of playing in the NBA at the same time that Bill Russell and that Celtics dynasty was alive and kicking.  After his playing days, he was the GM of the Clippers for almost 20 years.

Rest in peace, Elgin Baylor.

Before I get to specific game comments from yesterday’s second round Tournament games, let me insert something here that I should have mentioned yesterday.  When Abilene Christian upset Texas in the tournament over the weekend, it had to be a doubly bitter pill for Texas fanboys to swallow:

• The Longhorns were a 3-seed and got  bounced by a 14-seed.
• The loss came to a poor-relative school in the State of Texas.

There has been ample evidence over the past 10-15 years that Texas alums hold football coaches on a short and tight leash.  The recent firing of Tom Hermann exemplifies the demanding nature of that impatience on the part of the deep-pocketed boosters.  Because of that impatience, I wonder if this embarrassing basketball loss to Abilene Christian might incite an uprising among Texas alums against coach Shaka Smart.  I think that would be a big mistake – – but when fanboys with deep pockets start to feel that they are not getting what they feel entitled to, there is no telling what might happen next…

Having watched tons of basketball games over the past several days – – total immersion would be a good description – – let me say that I love to watch college basketball on TV, but it does need some rule changes:

• Teams have too many timeouts.  Look, there are 8 television timeouts built into every game.  This is not a rec league with a “coach” who knows far less about the game than he thinks he does.  Each team should have 1 timeout per half that they may call on their own; the rest of the stoppages will be for TV timeouts.
• Rules that require the officials to read minds are bad.  Therefore, change the rule on flagrant fouls to the discretion of the individual; the current difference between Flagrant 1 and Flagrant 2 fouls needs amicus curiae briefs to be filed and analyzed on the fly.
• Another discretion rule that needs changing is the “hanging on the rim after a dunk” rule.  Is it OK or is it “excessive”?  Here is my rule; if a player dunks the ball and grabs the rim for ANY REASON, the basket does not count, and it is a technical foul on the dunker.  No need for much interpretation here.  Coaches will take care of teaching that aspect of the game very quickly taking the need for officiating judgement off the table in one off-season.

I have always had my doubts about college sports “Selection Committees” and their ability to deliver a quality product.  I must admit that I did not watch nearly as much college basketball this year as I have in the past, so I had no basis to quarrel with much of the Basketball Selection Committees’ seedings this year.  But seriously…?  Do you believe that all the members of the committee spent enough time WATCHING these teams play – as opposed to watching YouTube highlights and reading accounts of the games?  If so, how did some of these monumentally erroneous seeding come to be?  The problem here is simple; the Committee is made up of too many people who have regular day-jobs that keep them busy 40 hours a week or more; it is not that they do not want to do a good job; they do not have the time to devote to this committee assignment to be able to do a good job.

On to Monday’s games:

• Iowa/Oregon:  Both offenses were fast, effective and efficient in the 1^st half; there were 102 points on the board at halftime.  The Oregon defense was even more impressive than the Oregon offense which scored 95 points for the game.
• Oklahoma/Gonzaga:  Oklahoma finished 7^th in the Big 12 in 2021 regular season; how did that happen?  Could not keep up with Gonzaga but there is no shame in that.  Lots of bad calls by officials on blocking/charging situations in this game.
• Ohio/Creighton:  With 7:19 to go in the 1^st half, the score was 19-19.  The announcer said after a made basket, “Whoo, there’s some shooting going on …”  Not really.  Ohio could have been one of the Tournament Cinderellas, but they coughed it up.
• Abilene Christian/UCLA:  The Bruins won this game hardly breaking a sweat…
• Michigan/LSU:  The first half was an evenly matched contest.  The second half was a series of runs by both teams.  In the last 5 minutes, the shot selection by LSU was awful.
• Florida St./Colorado:  This was a grind-it-out game in the first half by both teams; the Seminoles led 24-20 at the half.  My note from the second half was, “What is a good antonym for ‘intense?”

[Aside:  Thesaurus.com suggests “bland”, “dull” and/or “mild” as possible antonyms for “intense”.  Those are good descriptors here…]

• Maryland/Alabama:  This game was a blow-out.  One question that kept coming to mind was, “Why does Maryland think it is a good idea to take 3-point shots with not a single Maryland player within 15 feet of the basket to try to rebound a possibly missed shot?”
• Kansas/USC:  Kansas looked like a 15-seed in the first half and trailed by 19 points at the half.  Then things went all to Hell for the Jayhawks in the second half…

Finally, Brad Dickson – – formerly of the Omaha World-Herald – – must believe that the Governor of Nebraska has been glued to the TV during March Madness:

“Breaking: Apparently after watching too many sporting events, the Nebraska governor is about to announce that businesses can reopen ‘at 110% capacity.’ ”

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