Category: Daily Rants

In the fifth round of the NFL Draft last weekend, the Panthers took Kenny Robinson, a safety from West Virginia.  Robinson is noteworthy because he played football in the XFL this season until the league had to declare bankruptcy as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.  [Aside:  It is unkind and unproveable to assert that the XFL would have gone bankrupt anyway and that COVID-19 merely hastened the process.]  Most of the other XFL players were not eligible for the NFL Draft because their NCAA eligibility had expired in previous years coincident with the expiration of the NCAA eligibility.  Robinson was still eligible because he was an underclassman who left WVU as a result of allegations related to academic fraud.  In a sense, those allegations provided him with a benefit. Interesting…

With the demise of the XFL – save for the legal proceedings involved with the bankruptcy filing and the lawsuits that are certain to come to life as a result of that filing – I want to look at several of the things the XFL introduced to professional football and to sort out the ones I think the NFL should adopt.

The best innovation from the brief history of the XFL was the transparency and the speed of its booth reviews; the NFL should find a way to mimic what the XFL did there and adopt it immediately.  The transparency is easy to achieve; it takes a camera in the replay booth along with an audio feed to the airwaves.  With those minimal intrusions, XFL viewers could hear the communication between the booth and the referee on the field and it could see the camera shots that the replay official was using to make his determination.  I have been on a sufficient number of journeys around the sun to know that this will not eliminate conspiracy theories among fans – – but it should reduce the number.

In the XFL there were no PATs.  After a touchdown, the scoring team had 3 options:

1. It could run a play from scrimmage at the 2 yardline; if it reached the end zone, that was worth 1 point.
2. It could run a play from scrimmage at the 5 yardline; if it reached the end zone, that was worth 2 points.
3. It could run a play from scrimmage at the 10 yardline; if it reached the end zone, that was worth 3 points.

I like this rule because it replaces a less-than-exciting place-kicking play with another play from scrimmage – which is what a fan tunes in to see.  Moreover, the ability to select from the menu of where to place the ball introduces another layer of strategy to the game and I do not see how that would be a negative factor.

The XFL kickoff rule is a plus for player safety because it reduces the number of full speed collisions on those plays.  Here is a link to a report that has text and graphic representations of the kickoff rule in case you did not watch any XFL games on TV.  This rule should indeed increase player safety; at the same time, it is a significant departure from a fundamental part of the game.  I would lean to the side of player safety here since there is precedent in football history for changes to the kickoff rule in pursuit of that goal.  Recall that the flying wedge used to be part of kickoff return strategy; so, changes to the kickoff rules should not be considered sacrosanct.

In the XFL, double forward passes were allowed if the first of the two forward passes on a play was completed behind the line of scrimmage.  I only saw one team try this one time and I was not so horrified by it that I ran screaming from the TV set and hid under my bed.  The only objection I have to this rule is that it gives another advantage to the offensive unit and I do not think that the field needs to be tilted in that direction any more than it is now.

Another XFL rule innovation is not innovative at all.  The XFL adopted the college football rule requiring only 1 foot to be inbounds for a completed pass.  Again, this provides the offense with another advantage.  Personally, I think that there have been enough rule changes with that intent and result.

Regarding production of the game itself for TV, the XFL added another sideline reporter to the mix – one on each side of the field – and they instituted ingame interviews with players and coaches.  Such a bad idea…  Sideline reporters and the insights they bring to the game are even less exciting that PATs.  If you stick a microphone in the face of a QB who just threw an INT and ask him what he saw on the play – – obviously not the defender – – you should quickly realize that none of the answers increase understanding on the part of the viewer or the reporter.  And Heaven forbid you should ask a player who just lost a fumble how he feels at the moment…

Another production innovation was to allow viewers to listen in on the electronic communications between coaches and players.  Those were interesting for about the first half-dozen times they added that audio feed to the broadcast.  After that, it was much ado about nothing because it was all jargon/gibberish.

So, the breakdown of seven XFL innovations creates three layers for the NFL to consider:

• Replay transparency:  Adopt it.
• Eliminate PATs:  Adopt it.
• XFL kickoff rule:  Adopt it.
• Double forward passes:  Save this until NFL defenses catch up to NFL offenses and the league mavens think they need to inject more offense into the games.
• One foot inbounds for completed passes:  See Double forward passes above.
• Additional ingame sideline reporting:  Drive a wooden stake into the heart of this idea.
• Access to coach/player electronic communication:  Sounds like it would be interesting – – but it isn’t; don’t do this.

Finally, Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times had this to say about another competition that was canceled due to the COVID-19 outbreak:

“As if all the other shutdowns weren’t enough, now they’re telling us there won’t be a Scripps National Spelling Bee this year.

“There are no words …”

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

 

 

The NBA has a tentative plan for its reopening – – sort of.  I say “sort of” not to mock or deride their announcement of a plan but to recognize what the league itself knows:

• Events created by the COVID-19 pandemic can demand changes in plans and behaviors.  The NBA told the teams at the end of its description of a phased opening that it “may push this timing back if developments warrant.”

The reopening plan calls for practice facilities to open in a measured way starting on May 8^th.  The idea of a “measured way” can be recognized by some of the limits on what can happen in the practice facilities as of May 8^th:

• The practice facilities are intended to provide venues for “limited individual workouts”.  Head coaches and assistant coaches are not to be present for these “limited individual workouts”.
• No more than four players may be present in the practice facility at a given time.
• There are to be no scrimmages.
• Players must wear a mask when not working out.
• Any team employee – such as part of the training staff – present in the facility must wear masks and gloves and must remain 12 feet away from any players or one another.

Obviously, the NBA is taking the lead among major US sports to move toward reopening and it is doing it cautiously.  Over and above the league’s caution, there is one other important caveat involved here that can override this announced date to begin reopening:

• Practice facilities will only be opened in places where the activities permitted in those facilities would comply with state and local regulations such as stay-at-home orders.  [Translation:  The NBA has no interest in being a scofflaw and getting into an adversarial posture with mayors and governors.]

May 8^th is ten days from today.  For every team to be able to open its own practice facility and not go looking for one in a different venue, a lot of states and local jurisdictions are going to have to lift existing stay-at-home orders.  There are 30 NBA teams; if I have counted correctly, they “reside” in 21 states, the District of Columbia and Ontario, Canada.  Just to highlight the complexity of that issue, as of this morning:

1. The Oklahoma City Thunder would be able to follow the NBA rules on May 8^th as there are plans for Oklahoma to reopen before then.
2. The LA Clippers and Lakers play in a city where the mayor has said he cannot envision the return of sports to the city before Thanksgiving.

Without attempting to choose sides in the debate between epidemiology and economics, I think we can all agree that the positions currently taken by the officials in Oklahoma and Georgia differ significantly from those taken by the officials in California and New York.  Moreover, it is not likely that the NBA will be the go-between to resolve calmly and rationally those significant differences.

One of the phrases that has become commonplace in English over the past couple of years is to label statements and ideas as “aspirational”.  I am completely fed-up with that label because what it really means is that the statement or the idea getting the label has now been shown to be “ignorant” or “impossible” – – but we would not want to say such a nasty thing about a person or an idea and we call it “aspirational”.   Bullspit!

I think this is the exception that proves the rule.  I think the NBA’s reopening plan is indeed “aspirational”.  The NBA knows that this timeline may not happen; they probably know that this timeline is unlikely to happen; at the same time they are “hopeful” – which is a synonym for “aspirational” while “ignorant” and “impossible” are not – that they can begin to get back to normal starting on May 8, 2020.

Another sport – not nearly as visible as the NBA – has announced its plans to resume competition.  USA Swimming – the national governing body for swimming here – said that it will resume regional events in August leading up to national events in November 2020.  Those events from August through November are part of a process that will lead to the competition that selects the US Olympic Swimming Team for next summer’s Games in Tokyo.

Once again, the announcement of these plans is tentative and depends on any restrictions that may exist at the state and local levels.  A statement issued by the CEO of USA Swimming makes it clear that things might have to change:

“I think everything is taken with a grain of salt and maybe even more than one grain of salt. “We’re trying to bring normalcy back when it’s not normal, and we know that. But we have to have a Plan A, a Plan B and even a Plan C.”

Finally, why are “reopening plans” worthy of comment?  Let me leave you today with an item from Dwight Perry’s column, Sideline Chatter in the Seattle Times:

“Think those Nebraskans are football-crazy? This year’s Cornhuskers’ spring game drew a crowd of 20,000.

“That’s 20,000 — as in people remotely tuning in to watch a simulated eSports version after the real game was canceled.”

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

 

 

I don’t know who came up with the idea to assign grades to the NFL Draft the day after it was over.  Presumably, he/she did not realize what a scourge would be released upon the sporting public when everyone glommed onto that format and made that “analysis” seemingly mandatory for the day after the Draft.  In addition to the format having become its own cliché, there are two other fundamental problems with such things:

1. Perhaps as many as half of the first-round picks will be severe disappointments let alone players taken later.  The problem here is that we will not recognize that for about two seasons.  Assigning grades now presumes the ability to see into the future to make such determinations – – but if one could do that, there would never be any draft busts.
2. With all due respect to the myriad authors of these pieces, how many of them can honestly say they have watched the 100 or so players taken in rounds 5 through 7 play football?  If you have not done that, what might be the basis for grading a team’s Draft at this point?

I think these two limitations are reflected in the Draft Grade Column that appeared in the Washington Post yesterday.  Here is the grade distribution for the 32 teams:

• Three teams got an A or an A-minus.
• One team got a D.
• Twenty-eight teams got grades from C-minus to B +

Really?

I shall not be awarding grades here, but I do want to comment on the Draft and the coverage of the Draft.  Remembering the reality that plenty of players taken in this year’s Draft will be mediocre at best as an NFL player, I thought it was interesting to hear the ESPN and NFLN draft analysts lavish praise on virtually every pick.  It was somewhere in the sixth round on Saturday when I returned to the TV having poured myself a glass of wine and heard one of the analysts off-screen describe one of the picks by saying that the Colts had gotten themselves “a real player here”.  That must be good news in Indy because it would have been embarrassing for the Colts to have drafted a figment of their imaginations.  Sigh…

I liked the format of this Draft a lot; in fact, I like it better than the format where they hold the draft in the presence of several hundred thousand mouthbreathers.  Moreover, the home shots of players and families reacting to Draft news was infinitely better than having a reporter assigned to stick a microphone in front of a player and ask, “So, how does it feel to be a (fill in the blank)?”  Occasionally, they might mix in something like, “So, growing up in Asshat AK, did you ever think you would be drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft?”  I much prefer to see the player/family reactions and to skip the stupid interview questions.

When Alan Greenspan was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, he once warned investors not to succumb to “irrational exuberance”.  That malady finds its way into NFL Drafts too.  Lamar Jackson compared the Ravens’ first round pick – – Patrick Queen – – to Ray Lewis.  Jackson dubbed Queen as “Ray Lewis, Jr.”

Really?

I have some observations regarding the Draft to present here.  Please do not expect depth of insight or anything remotely like that:

• Browns:  They signed an undrafted free agent, AJ Green who is a DB.  If he makes the team, it is possible that AJ Green (Browns) might wind up covering AJ Green (Bengals) twice a year.
• Chiefs:  They probably wanted to have a rhyming theme to this year’s draft because two of their draftees have first names of L’Jarius and Thakarius.
• Eagles:  They must have been trying to corner the market on players named Jalen.  They took two of them in the first two rounds and they have Jalen Mills already on the roster.
• Eagles:  They drafted a linebacker from Temple named Shaun Bradley.  They have to hope this works out better than the last time a Philly team took a player named Shawn Bradley…
• Eagles:  They drafted Prince Tega Wanogho in Round 6 and signed Prince Smith as an undrafted free agent.  Remember, this is the team that also had King Hill as a backup QB for about 6 years in the 1960s.
• Eagles:  They need WRs.  They drafted 3 of them and traded for a fourth.
• Giants:  They need offensive linemen.  They drafted 3 of them last weekend.
• Rams:  The Eagles drafted two players named Jalen; the Rams drafted two players named Terrell.
• Panthers:  They gave up 29.4 points per game last year; only the Dolphins allowed more points scored for the season.  In this year’s Draft, the Panthers had 7 picks and took 6 defensive players.
• Vikings:  Somehow, they amassed 15 picks in this Draft.

Finally, Greg Cote of the Miami Herald had this observation about a form of Draft coverage that I missed:

“Showtime has ex-NFL QB Mark Sanchez in a new digital series talking with top quarterbacks in this draft. Wait a second. Isn’t that like putting top thespians in an acting roundtable hosted by Adam Sandler?”

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

 

 

Watching the NFL Draft take place last night in some sort of virtual reality was interesting enough; most importantly, it took place in the present tense as opposed to being a replay of some previous event of the same ilk.  You can find a jillion reports this morning analyzing which team “got it right” and which team “got it wrong” last night completely ignoring the fact that it makes little sense to try to evaluate a draft for about the first two years after it happens.  However, enough time seems to have passed to revisit a recent draft and point out what appears to be a severe mistake.

In the 2017 Draft, the Jags had the 4^th pick.  The Jags have had a Top 5 so often that one might assume there is an arcane clause in the NFL Bylaws assuring the Jags of such a status.  Actually, the clause is not that arcane; teams get Top 5 picks regularly when they stink year after year after…  The Jags were bad in 2016; hence their “elite status” in the 2017 Draft.

The Jags took Leonard Fournette with that pick.  He has been in Jax for 3 seasons; in that time, he has averaged 4.0 yards per carry and 73.1 yards per game.  Also, in that time, Fournette has shown some meathead tendencies to the point where there are myriad reports that the Jags are trying to trade him but there are no takers.  At best, the Jags got a big physical specimen of a running back with the #4 pick who turns out to post nothing more than decent stats and has behavioral issues that have gotten him suspended.

If that were all there were to the situation, you would have to say the Jags wasted such a high pick.  But as the guy on the infomercial always says:

• “But wait … there’s more!”

Here are just some of the players the Jags ignored when they had that 4^th pick in the 2017 Draft:

• Jamal Adams taken at #6
• Christian McCaffrey taken at #8 [Also a running back I might point out…]
• Patrick Mahomes taken at #10
• Marshon Lattimore taken at #11
• Deshaun Watson taken at #12
• Marlon Humphrey taken at #16
• TreDavious White taken at #27
• TJ Watt taken at #30

That is just a sampling of what the Jags did not want to take with that #4 pick; that list does not extend into anything beyond the first round of the 2017 Draft but it should be noted that all of those passed-over players have already been to a Pro Bowl.  [For what it’s worth, these RBs taken much later in the 2017 Draft have also been to Pro Bowls – Dalvin Cook, Alvin Kamara, Kareem Hunt, James Connor and Tarik Cohen.]

Another perspective from previous NFL Drafts demonstrates how short NFL careers are for many players.  Consider the players taken in the overall #1 position from 2010 through 2015:

• 2010 – Sam Bradford – not on any NFL roster this morning
• 2011 – Cam Newton – now a free agent looking for a place to land
• 2012 – Andrew Luck – retired
• 2013 – Eric Fisher – still with the KC Chiefs, the team that drafted him
• 2014 – Jadeveon Clowney – now a free agent looking for a place to land
• 2015 – Jameis Winston – now a free agent looking for a place to land

The oldest player on that list is 32 years old.  Sic transit gloria mundi …

Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are going to fill a bit of the void in the sports world by staging another exhibition match as a made-for-TV spectacle.  For this encore performance, the two golfers have added an interesting twist; they will each have an “amateur partner” making it a two-on-two competition.  The “amateurs” will be Tom Brady and Peyton Manning.

Turner Sports will produce and broadcast this event.  It will take place sometime in May at an as-yet-to-be-determined venue because the producers have made it clear that this will only happen in a place where the event will comply with all health strictures and with all governmental regulations.  All proceeds from the event have been pledged to COVID-19 relief efforts.

I have made it clear on many occasions here that watching golf on TV is not one of my favorite things.  I will watch the final round of a major tournament – sort of – but that’s about it.  I will probably watch this event for the same reason that I was enthusiastic about watching last night’s NFL Draft – – it is a live event and not something pulled from the video archive at Turner Sports.

Meanwhile the PGA is looking at a restart for its tournaments sometime in mid-June.  That announcement prompted Greg Cote of the Miami Herald to make this comment:

“The PGA Tour is planning a mid-June return with no fans, assuring the look and ambiance of it will have all the excitement of a Tuesday practice round. Meantime, GolfTV reported exclusively that the gum Tiger Woods chews on a golf course is orange-flavored Trident. Run to the store and start hoarding!”

Emphasis was in the original …

Finally, since I mentioned “short careers” for NFL players above, let me close today with a pertinent entry from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Elderly:  Of advanced years.  Or, as it is known in the entertainment industry, twenty-seven.”

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

 

 

Muffet McGraw announced her retirement as the women’s basketball coach at Notre Dame.  She has been on the job there since 1987 after 5 years as the women’s basketball coach at Lehigh.  Overall, her teams’ combined record was 936 – 232; her teams won more than 3 games out of 4.  Notre Dame won the National Championship twice in her tenure there and made the Final Four seven other times.  She is a member of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Bonne chance, Muffet McGraw…

MLB Commissioner, Rob Manfred announced yesterday the culmination of his investigation into the Red Sox involvement in sign-stealing.  The outcome – and the punishments handed down – are anti-climatic when compared with the news related to the Astros for the same offense.  Here are the sanctions:

• The Red Sox will lose a second-round pick in this year’s MLB Draft – whenever that takes place.
• The Sox video replay operator, J.T. Watkins is banned from baseball through the end of the 2020 season – if there is one – and Watkins will not be allowed to perform video replay duties during the 2021 season.
• Fired Red Sox manager Alex Cora did not receive any extra punishment as a result of this investigation; his banishment from baseball through the end of the 2020 season – if there is one – for his involvement in the Astros’ cheating scheme remains in place.

Recall that the Astros were fined $5M as a team and that the Astros lost 4 draft picks a few months ago.  Basically, Manfred’s decision here means that he determined that what the Red Sox did was wrong but that it was not nearly as wrong as what the Astros did.  Here is a link to the Executive Summary of Manfred’s report and decision in the matter from mlb.com.

Because of the significant disparity in the punishments handed down and the absence of any opprobrium directed at any Red Sox players or coaches, I figured that the NY press would not be thoroughly happy with this result.  An article in this morning’s NY Post corroborated that suspicion.  The article begins with this sentence:

“Was J.T. Watkins just another scapegoat?”

Not surprisingly, this morning’s New York Times took a far more measured approach to the story and reported on the details of Manfred’s decision and how it was communicated inside MLB’s highest levels.  That is why the NY Post sports section is much more fun to read – – if not more accurate.

I am confident that within the next day or so there will be stories in the NY tabloids railing against the “cheating Red Sox” and quoting Yankee players and managers and whomevers about how the Red Sox accomplishments are tainted.  I want to get out front of those stories here; when they appear, here is what I hope someone reporting the story has the integrity to respond:

• How many KNOWN PED cheaters were on those Yankees’ rosters in the late 90s and the early “aughts” when the Yanks were winning all those pennants and World Series?
• And how many were there that everyone knew were “using” but no one could prove it in a court of law?
• Physician, heal thyself…

The NFL Draft starts tonight, and it will be done via video conferencing and streaming and all that kind of new age stuff.  The potential for a hiccough exists.  So, let me take a moment here to highlight a few oddities from NFL drafts over the years.  I am not a football historian by any stretch of the imagination; I leave that sort of title to folks like Dan Daly and Ray Didinger and “the reader from Houston”.  Here are “draft glitches” I can recall:

• The NFL Draft began in 1936.  The Eagles had the overall #1 pick and drafted Jay Berwanger; he refused to play for them.  The Eagles had the overall #1 pick in 1937 too.  They drafted Sam Francis who also refused to play for them.  Things were tough in Philly in the mid-30s…
• In the mid-40s, the Skins drafted a player in the first round, but he was a junior in college and at the time was not eligible for the draft.  So, the next year, the Skins again took him in the first round.  He decided not to play professional football.  Sounds like a serious lack of communication there…
• About 20 years ago, the Vikes missed the time-limit for making their selection.  They did not lose the pick, but their snafu allowed two other teams to hustle and make selections before the Vikes could get their card up to the podium.

However, I believe that the ultimate “draft glitch” award belongs not with any NFL team; it belongs to the Canadian Football League where in two consecutive drafts in the 1990s, teams selected players who were dead at the time of the draft.  That will be tough to top…

Finally, Dwight Perry had two more comments regarding sports and social distancing in the Seattle Times recently:

“Overzealous college boosters, embracing the spirit of social distancing, are now including a tiny bottle of sanitizer with every $100 handshake.”

And …

“The ‘Field of Dreams’ ghosts, tired of waiting for a statewide quarantine edict, are reportedly social-distancing six cornrows apart.”

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

 

 

I want to talk about college basketball today notwithstanding the fact that there was no NCAA Tournament this year nor are we anywhere near the NBA Draft.  The issue at hand is that a 5-Star high school recruit named Jalen Green has decided to take up an NBA offer to play in the G-League for a year – reportedly for a salary of $500K – instead of going to college to play basketball there for “tuition room and board”.  Some folks have jumped to the conclusion that this is the demise of men’s college basketball.

I think they are wrong; in fact, I think this will highlight the value of college basketball as a competitive sport worth watching and as a way for top-shelf talent to develop their skills and their “brands”.  Let me explain…

I have never seen Jalen Green play basketball; I take his 5-Star Rating as a fact and I recall that some previous 5-Star Rated players have turned out to be great while some others have turned out to be mediocre.  I will stipulate here that he will be great; I wish him good fortune in his basketball career.

Having said that, college basketball survived the absence of players such as:

• Kobe Bryant
• Kevin Garnett
• Dwight Howard
• LeBron James
• Shawn Kemp
• Moses Malone

I suspect the game of college basketball will also survive the absence of Jalen Green.  Even if the NBA changes its rule about drafting players to allow every high school basketball player who wants to “jump directly to the NBA” to do so, I think college basketball will survive.  I don’t think it will take too many years of high schoolers having free access to the NBA for the lesson to be learned that it is far more difficult to earn your way to playing time – and a continued roster spot – in the NBA than it is to declare for the draft and to be drafted.  Plenty of players drafted under the current “more restrictive” system spend little or no time actually in the NBA.

College basketball will also demonstrate that it is a better place for a player to develop his “brand”.  There were G-League games on TV this year and I would find them as I grazed through the channels on my cable TV sports package.  I could not tell you the attendance at any of the game snippets I saw but of this I am sure:

• Had I been in the arena at tip-off time and decided to “count the house” in the early parts of the game, I would have completed my count and settled back to watch the game with about 9 or 10 minutes left in the first quarter.

No one goes to those games – and the TV ratings for G-League games were better than infomercials for miraculous new vacuum cleaners that air at 3:00 AM but not a lot better.  The new wave of high school phenoms earning a tidy $500K to play basketball will do so in relative anonymity.  That does nothing positive for “developing one’s brand”.  There is a recent example of this:

• LaMelo Ball is supposed to be a top Draft pick this year.  He gained fame a few years ago when Lavar Ball and Lonzo Ball were ubiquitous in every media outlet.  LaMelo took his talents to Lithuania and Australia and arrives at the Draft with a certain level of “fame”.
• Compare that to Zion Williamson from last year at this time who played part of a season at Duke.

Being totally objective, Zion Williamson had a far more defined and refined “brand” when he came up to the Draft.  I believe that will continue to be the case so long as there is a March Madness – as I hope there will next year in the absence of a second wave of COVID-19.  The allure of college basketball is its competition and its player development.  Those aspects of college basketball will not go away because Jalen Green is playing in the G-League next year.

By the way, it was not all that long ago when Brandon Jennings decided to skip college basketball and to play a year in one of the European Pro Leagues.  Jennings was drafted and played about 10 years in the NBA for a handful of teams.  He too was alleged to be setting a trend that would severely hamper college basketball and change things radically.  I suggest that Jalen Green and Brandon Jennings are remarkably similar in that aspect of their careers and their “brands”.

Moving on …  A few days ago, the NY Post reported that Joe Buck had turned down a $1M offer to do “play-by-play” from a porn site.  I suspect that some of you think this is a joke, so here is the link to that report.  The porn site:

“…has created a special section on its website for sports commentators to provide live play-by-play commentary for live adult cam shows for blind and visually impaired users …”

How politically correct and incorrect at the same time…

Finally, a timely observation from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“Not that college athletics are totally sticklers for the 6-foot rule or anything, but even William & Mary are social distancing.”

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

 

 

Somewhere in Bristol CT, an executive on mahogany row might have a smile on his/her face this morning.  ESPN has a live sporting event to put on TV tonight and it just might be better than the abomination that was the NBA H-O-R-S-E tournament.  Then again, it might not be a big attraction because the underlying sport is not a big attraction.

Placed on “the mothership” – ESPN itself and not one of the satellite channels – the WNBA Draft will unfold.  This is a real event happening in real time; what takes place there is genuinely news; the question for ESPN is this:

• Since only a small fraction of the normal viewers of ESPN have any idea who these players are and what is the status of the 12 teams in the WNBA, will folks tune in to see it simply because it is real and not historical?

According to several reports I read this morning, the presumptive #1 pick tonight will be Sabrina Ionescu who played at Oregon last season and was unanimously selected as the AP Player of the Year.  Notwithstanding that achievement, I have no idea who she is and how she plays.  According to those same reports, there are a handful of other players who are likely to fill out the first 5 or 6 picks in this draft; I do not recognize a single name in those reports.

That situation is why the NFL and the NBA Drafts are widely followed as TV events; we know most of the players in the draft because we have seen them play.  The WNBA Draft – and the MLB Draft – suffer by comparison because we have not seen most of the players in competition.  Tonight may be a bit different because of the lack of any sort of sports programming that has been live over the last month or so.  ESPN certainly hopes so …

Earlier this week, the Governor of Florida declared pro ‘rassling to be an “essential service” thereby classifying pro ‘rassling with things like police, fire, hospitals, grocery stores and the like.  Here is how the folks who make such determinations in Florida expanded the definition of “essential services” to permit pro ‘rassling to be included:

“Essential services inter alia shall include “employees at a professional sports and media production with a national audience – including any athletes, entertainers, production team, executive team, media team and any others necessary to facilitate including services supporting such production – only if the location is closed to the general public”.

As to the reason for such an expansion of the definition of “essential services”, the governor said that pro ‘rassling services are “critical” to Florida’s economy.  There is no punch line here; this is news and not a joke…

I have written here several times that I genuinely want the return of sports to our society because I miss them, and I enjoy them.  I have also written that I do not believe that sports should be restarted any time soon because the COVID-19 situation has been slowed down but it has not been resolved.  Every once in a while, I run across a piece that argues for an early reopening of sports in the US because of some putative healing power or social bonding effect that derives from professional sports.

In such pieces, you can be certain to find references to the fact that MLB and the NFL played their games during WWII – even though many of the best players were serving overseas in that war.  Another historical citation often used is that the NFL staged games only a couple of days after President Kennedy was assassinated and many of them point to rapid return of MLB to NYC after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Towers.  All these things are historically accurate; none of them are concocted or contorted.  The do differ from the current situation in a fundamental way however:

• The MLB and NFL games played in the US during WWII did not have an adverse effect on the war effort in Europe or the Pacific.
• The NFL games played after the Kennedy assassination did not endanger the newly sworn in president nor did it hinder the recovery of John Connally who was also wounded in that event.
• The return of MLB to NYC in the aftermath of 9/11 did not affect the structural integrity of any other structures in NYC thereby endangering other residents and workers.
• The premature resumption of sports-as-we-know-them thinking that they have some societal palliative value could very well make the pandemic worse. 

When we think about restarting sports in the US, we ought to take a page from the folks in the medical profession who take the Hippocratic Oath.  I am incapable of translating the original text of this ethical exposition, but supposedly the opening line says:

“First, do no harm.”

Let me suggest that sports execs and TV execs and politicians – – like the Governor of Florida – – adopt that fundamental principle whenever they need to make any decision that relates to the sports cosmos.  Sports are fun; sports are integral to many lives and to society; sports are a significant part of the economic engine; sports are important.  And stopping this pandemic is even more important…

Finally, Bob Molinaro has this report in his column this week in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:

“Idle thought: I began social distancing years ago when somebody would approach and try to tell me about his fantasy football team.”

Me too…

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

 

 

We all realize that the coronavirus has had major economic impact in virtually every corner of the industrialized world, and we should not be surprised to recognize that even the very rich owners of major sports franchises are feeling the pinch. There are fixed costs that an owner has to endure as a result of his ownership whether or not there is ever a game played. Some examples are:

• Lease costs for venues
• Interest owed on money borrowed
• Wages paid to core workers who are not furloughed
• Insurance premiums
• Legal fees

I got to thinking about those sorts of things in my abundant spare time now that my long-suffering wife will not allow me to set foot outside of our abode “in an abundance of caution”. And that led me to wonder if any owner might need to sell his franchise in order to shore up his finances in the area that got him enough money to buy a sports franchise in the first place. Then, I wondered if any owner might be feeling a double whammy here:

1. His sports franchise is not bringing in any money
2. His “core business” is also in a bad way

I could only come up with one example like this one. Micky Arison owns the Miami Heat; they are in lockdown at the moment. Micky Arison achieved his net worth of approximately $5B as the chairman of Carnival Crop which gets its money from Carnival Cruise Lines and that is not exactly a booming business as of April 2020. Let me be clear, I am not suggesting that the Miami Heat may be on the market nor am I suggesting that Arison is having any sort of “solvency issues”. He is, however, involved in two large and visible business areas that are stalled for the moment.

The virus continues to push back sports scheduling for this season. MLS has abandoned its hope to restart its season in mid-May; their current projection is that they will start up again on June 8 and they now acknowledge that they will not be able to get in a full season.

In England, the EFL – that is all the pro soccer leagues below the Premier League but not including the Premier League – also hopes to resume action in early June. That sounds like good news, but it comes on the heels of some dire reporting recently. Sky Sports says that there are EFL clubs that are “days away from going bust” and the BBC reported that there could be a dozen or more “insolvencies” among the EFL clubs.

Meanwhile, the clubs in the Premier League have not targeted any date for a restart there. However, there is some financial news attached to the Premier League. Newcastle United is in the process of being sold to “British businesswoman Amanda Staveley with a large Saudi Arabian backing”. The report says that the price for Newcastle United is $391M.

There is at least one Premier League team that would seem to have a nice cushion in these times of restricted revenues. Manchester City sold the naming rights for its home stadium a couple years ago to Etihad Airlines and that deal brings in a tidy $27.4M annually for the club.

Leaving the financial world but staying with news regarding soccer, Sepp Blatter is back in the news. The former major domo of FIFA – he is banned from the institution based on corruption – was interviewed by a German magazine and he says that the US could host the World Cup in 2022 instead of 2026 if FIFA decides to move the games out of Qatar.  There are multiple reasons for FIFA to consider such a move including:

• There is evidence that the selection of Qatar was based on FIFA members taking bribes in exchange for a positive vote for Qatar.
• The games would need to be staged at “the wrong time of the year” because it is too hot to play in Qatar in June/July/August.
• The working conditions in Qatar for those building the venues has been likened to slavery. [Aside:  Even as venal as FIFA execs have shown themselves to be, they do not like being associated with anything that has the word “slavery” attached to it.]

To be sure, Blatter’s pronouncements have no weight within FIFA anymore. What he was doing here was musing about what might happen if such a change of venue were to take place. He said that Germany could host the tournament because it has all the infrastructure needed for the tournament already in place – – but since the World Cup in 2018 was in Russia, that would put two consecutive World cups in Europe and that would not be a good thing for the international sport.  He also recognized that the US too already has the infrastructure in place to host this event and the US is gearing up to do just that in 2026.

This is an interesting proposition. Holding the World Cup here in 2022 would be a nice shot in the arm for the US economy; waiting until 2026 would mean that the US would host an expanded tournament consisting of 48 teams and not merely 32 teams. Six of one – – half dozen of the other…

Finally, Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times dug out this piece of news:

“A 9-year-old Belgian boy is set to graduate from Eindhoven’s University of Technology.

“It would’ve been 8, but he redshirted his freshman year.”

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

 

 

Hank Steinbrenner died yesterday; he was only 63 years old.  He and his brother have been the co-chairmen of the Yankees’ organization since George Steinbrenner passed away about 10 years ago.  The announcement of Hank Steinbrenner’s death specifically said that it was not due to COVID-19 but did not specify the exact cause.

Rest in peace, Hank Steinbrenner.

Finances at Disney Corp in general – and at ESPN in specific – must be in bad shape.  The coronavirus has taken the steady inflow of cash from the Disney theme parks and reduced it to a slow drip; ESPN has been dealing with losing cable subscribers to cord cutting.  I can understand the difficulties there, but a recent report puts a fine point on those difficulties:

“Highest-paid staff asked to take pay cuts by ESPN”

That was a headline in the Washington Post yesterday.  Basically, ESPN asked those folks to take a 15% pay cut for the next 3 months and the report said that this would affect about 100 folks at ESPN.  The report also said that folks making $500K or more were the ones asked to take this reduction.  The report did not say how many – if any – of those folks agreed to this reduction.

Obviously, ESPN wants sports to return to normalcy quickly; its financial existence depends on that.  In that sense, a giant enterprise like ESPN is not all that different from the Mom and Pop restaurant down the street that has been shuttered for the past several weeks.  Lots of people are looking forward to a return to “everyday life” – including almost everyone in the media except for those people and outlets that are reporting on the pandemic 24 hours a day.

Imagine you are the restaurant reviewer for a newspaper; there isn’t a lot for you to recommend to your loyal readers and there is no point in panning a place that you did not like because no one is going there without your negative review.  There are just so many times you can order takeout pizza and write about the service and the product before it gets pretty stale.

Thinking about our current situation broadly, my position is not what the execs at ESPN would want to hear.  I think lots of things should reopen before sports returns to its normal way of life.  As of today, much of the country goes about life in a way that limits gatherings of more than 10 people in close quarters.  [Obviously, hospitals are exempted from that restriction.]  A return to normalcy in the sports world would throw together groups of thousands of people in stadiums and arenas.  I’m not sure that would be a smart strategic move if the overriding objective is to reduce the likelihood of a COVID-19 resurgence.

That looks at the sports world merely from the perspective of fans in the stands.  I guess you could phase back in by playing games with no fans in attendance but that does not take into consideration the risk of viral spread among the players.  You can stage a golf tournament without fans and put it on TV; you can enforce social distancing; you can have the players and caddies masked.  It might look a bit odd – – but it could be done.

Now consider football … Social distancing in the huddle becomes a real challenge.  How many locker rooms will accommodate 53 players and 20 coaches without having some of them closer than 6 feet to one another?  Try the same mental exercise with baseball dugouts and basketball games; until there is a way to assure that everyone involved in a game is virus free, the danger of viral spread is real and significant.

I do not wish it were so, but I think that other segments of our economy and society will be opening in a staged and orderly fashion before sports makes its comeback.  In fact, I believe that sports execs should anticipate that fans will not rush to return to stadiums and arenas when stay-at-home orders are lifted.  I know that my thinking here runs counter to H.L. Mencken’s famous observation about people because I am attributing some reasoning abilities to the average fan.  Here is Mencken’s observation with which I generally agree:

“No one in this world, so far as I know … has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”

Finally, today was supposed to be Tax Day in the US before even that annual ritual was postponed for 3 months.  [Aside:  I don’t know about you, but when I prepare my tax returns there are never any other people within 6 feet of me.  Why that activity was pushed forward by the coronavirus is unclear.]  It seems appropriate today to close with this observation from Will Rogers:

“The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.”

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

 

 

Tarvaris Jackson died yesterday at the age of 36 as a result of a car accident.  Jackson was in the NFL for 9 seasons mostly as a backup QB.  In his last stop with the Seahawks, he was the backup for Russell Wilson, and he was part of the Seahawks Super Bowl winning team in 2014.

Rest in peace, Tarvaris Jackson.

Yesterday, I thought I might have gone over the edge talking about the MLB record for balks – both in a career and in a game.  With every sport short of camel racing and perhaps axe throwing on hiatus, material for these rants is hard to come by; so, I included that information on balks.  At about 2:30 PM here in Northern Virginia, I checked my email and saw that I had a missive from “The Reader in Houston”.  I was positive that I had made an error in my “balk stats” yesterday and he was going to correct it.  Actually, what his email did was to add to the story of the game where Bob Shaw balked three times in one inning and 5 times in one game.  Here is the text of that email:

“Actually, Charlie Hough (Texas) was called for nine balks in a major league exhibition game in the late 1980s, including seven in one inning. That happened mainly because the umps were going to enforce pitchers to come to a full-set position for the upcoming season.

“Billy Williams of the Cubs has the record for most balks caused in a game by a runner. In the Bob Shaw game you mentioned, four of the five balks came when Sweet Swinging Billy was on base, In the top of the first he singled and was balked to second and in the third when Shaw balked three times, Billy led off with a walk and was balked around the bases for a run, which was considered an earned run because it was due to the pitcher’s ‘negligence’. “

And now you know…

Just as I need to dig a bit for material here, the NBA and their “broadcast partner”, ESPN have had to dig deep for ways to keep pro basketball relevant in the days of COVID-19.  When wildcatters drill for oil, sometimes they “discover” as dry hole; similarly, ESPN and the NBA found a dry hole when they decided to televise a H-O-R-S-E tournament.  Maybe – – and it is even a stretch to say “maybe” here – – this might have been marginally interesting had the television production quality been up to ESPN’s normal standards.  It was not.

I watched about 2 minutes and decided that I had a better way to spend my time – – and I went and rearranged my sock drawer.  H-O-R-S-E is a game for kids to play among themselves; watching pro athletes play that sort of silly game is compelling for the first two shots or maybe three.  Add in the television quality that was no better than a video taken on my smartphone and that programing was an embarrassment to both the NBA and ESPN.

I really would have liked to be a fly on the wall when folks behind that programming got together to decide this was the way to attract eyeballs to ESPN and attention to the NBA.  Remember that the league tried to incorporate H-O-R-S-E into the annual All-Star nonsense about 10 years ago and then mercifully took that abomination off life support after a couple of years.  So, in that meeting where they all decided to resurrect this silliness, I wonder who was the one to suggest that this time around, things would be much better because the production qualities would be much poorer.  They had evidence this was a dumb idea and they went forward anyway.  My conclusion:

• It may have been a dumb idea and they knew it was a dumb idea, but no one had a less dumb idea – – so they went with it.

Here is a bit of free advice:

• Memo to NBA and ESPN Execs:  H-O-R-S-E is a kids’ game; it is fun for kids.  H-O-R-S-E is not a game to be televised; it is not sufficiently interesting; it is not a spectator sport.  Over and out…

And speaking of dumb ideas…  The NFL instituted a rule last year that allowed teams to challenge pass interference calls – – of the lack of a pass interference call on a play.  Everyone knows why that rule was put in effect; everyone also knows that the implementation of the rule last year did nothing to improve the game and did lots to generate even more controversy.  There seems to be a silver lining to this cloud.  Last year, the “pass interference challenge rule” was approved for only the 2019 season and would need to be re-approved to keep it on the books.

Given that players, coaches, fans and broadcasters are all unhappy with the implementation of the rule – even if some think it is well intentioned – it appears as if the NFL Competition Committee will not recommend keeping it on the books.  That is not the definitive act to erase it, but it does mean that the only way to keep it around any longer would be for the owners themselves to vote to reconsider it when the owners meet next month.  Assuming that does not happen, the pass interference challenge rule will go the way of all flesh whenever the NFL returns to action.

I am not alone in thinking the demise of that NFL rule is a good thing; here is what Bob Molinaro had to say about it in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:

“High five: It’s all but decided. After a one-season experiment ― more like a mockery of the rule ― the NFL will not extend the replay review for pass interference. Hooray.”

My only quibble with Professor Molinaro here is that we should not be “high-fiving” in the days of COVID-19…

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

“Anthony Fauci, the immunologist and national point man against the COVID-19 pandemic, was once the point guard and team captain for the Regis High School basketball team in Manhattan, Class of 1958.

“Quickie retro scouting report: liked to spread the court, run isolation plays; most effective from distance; played lockdown defense.”

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