The Sports Curmudgeon

Yesterday, I wrote about Donovan McNabb signing on with ESPN Radio to do color analysis for NFL games and I wished him well in that endeavor. Later in the day, I was in an e-mail conversation with someone who has known Donovan McNabb since about the time he was drafted by the Eagles in 1999. I asked this person how he thought McNabb would be in a radio booth given his performance as a studio analyst. Here was his assessment:

“I think he will be better in the booth. In studio, he tried too hard to be polished and ‘TV-ish’. He tended to overstate and too often went for the big sound bite which usually fell flat. A live game will force him to be more spontaneous and stick to talking X’s and O’s which he should do pretty well. He is no dope. He studied communications at Syracuse and prepared for a post-NFL career in TV.”

I certainly agree that Donovan McNabb is no dope. I guess I never interpreted his studio performance as going “for the big sound bite”; but if that is a correct assessment, I agree that doing, color analysis for a live game will relieve him of that temptation. I suspect that ESPN Radio will try to put him on a few Eagles’ games early in the season since McNabb was a teammate/understudy to new Eagles’ coach, Doug Pederson. Just that connection could provide him with a few opportunities for insights that will get him headed in a positive direction.

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that the cancellation of the NFL Hall of Fame Game – an extra meaningless EXHIBITION GAME no less – was a blessing for all of us. Loads of people on the Internet and in the “Twitterverse” do not feel that way and have declared this a disgrace of major proportion. I understand that people spent good money to buy tix for a game that never happened and that some folks traveled – and therefore incurred expenses – to go to the induction ceremonies and to see that game. I appreciate that those folks might be upset or even slightly angry about this turn of events. But let us maintain perspective here…

The Hall of Fame Game is an EXHIBITION GAME and it means NOTHING.

If the teams scheduled to play this game held a scrimmage at one of the two training camps, it would have as much impact on the world as would this EXHIBITION GAME.

Players should not risk their health/careers playing an EXHIBITION GAME on a field that is unsafe.

The Hall of Fame Game came under criticism last year because the playing field was substandard and Steelers’ kicker tore his ACL on that field. This year, the league “imported” a playing surface from the Superdome in New Orleans. That fact alone tells me that the NFL and the NFLPA – who inspected the field prior to the application of the paint job – knew that there were problems with this field. The powers that be chose to try to “fix” the problem from last year but did not get it right. Perhaps they might consider one of these two options:

1. Forget having an EXHIBITION GAME associated with the Hall of Fame induction. Those ceremonies pay tribute to the greatest players in the game; if there is to be a game associated with those ceremonies, at least it should be a real game that means something somewhere in the known universe.

2. If the NFL and the NFLPA must associate an EXHIBITION GAME with the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, do not put NFL players on a glorified high school field. There is an NFL quality field about 60 miles north of Canton, Ohio in Cleveland and another one about 225 miles southwest of Canton, Ohio in Cincinnati.

Meanwhile, the outraged folks need to adjust their medications on this topic. This is not an omen portending the downfall of Western Civilization. This is merely a demonstration that the NFL is playing one more EXHIBITION GAME over and above the 64 other ones – and that number is too many to begin with – just to put their product on TV as early as possible. That is all it is and nothing more.

The NY Yankees will finish a three-game series in Boston against the Red Sox tonight. Assuming that Alex Rodriguez is in the lineup, this will be his final game in Fenway Park since A-Rod is supposed to leave the team tomorrow and head off into the sunset. One of the great understatements of the month would be to say that A-Rod is not very popular in Boston. In fact, according to the NY Business Journal, Red Sox fans have been paying elevated prices on the ticket resale market just to go to Fenway for this series to express their displeasure with Alex Rodriguez. Consider:

Back in April/May this year, the median price on the resale market for a Yankees/Red Sox game was $99. The range of prices was $78 to $117. Yes, I know that it can be cold in Boston at night in April – and even May – but in that series, there was not the attraction of “last opportunity to boo A-Rod” in the offing.

This week, the median price for a resale ticket yesterday and tonight for the Yankees/Red Sox is $132 for last night and $159 for tonight. I really do not think that there are any other circumstances that would explain a 30-60% rise in the median price for a ticket to these games.

Here is a comment from Gregg Drinnan in his Keeping Score blog:

“Pre-Games headline at SportsPickle.com: Line already growing for Olympic Village’s working toilet.”

Finally, here is another Olympics-related comment from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“Sure sign you haven’t been paying close enough attention to the Olympic Games: You think Zika is Brazil’s latest soccer star.”

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

There were two reports at CBSSports.com yesterday that were ones I did not expect to see when I clicked on the website. The first report came from Will Brinson and it said that Tim Tebow has eschewed his NFL ambitions but plans to work out for MLB teams. The report cited Adam Schefter saying that Tebow has been working out/practicing/honing his baseball skills in Arizona for the past year. Tebow did play baseball successfully in high school and last played in 2005.

I am neither a “Tebow-fanboy” nor a “Tebow-hater”. I wish him well in this endeavor as a 29-year old man to take up a sport he played as a kid and to hope to make it to the top echelon of that sport while still in his athletic prime. I wish him good luck here but I am not going to wager any money on his ever making it to the big leagues.

The second report I did not expect to see yesterday comes from Dayn Perry and it said that Curt Schilling “announced” that he plans to run for the presidency in either 2020 or 2024. Jim Bunning was a Hall of Fame pitcher who had a stint in the US Senate; Wilmer ‘Vinegar Bend” Mizel was a MLB pitcher who served in the House of Representatives; there is precedence for pitchers to practice politics. Schilling’s Presidential Campaign would come after a presumably successful campaign to win an election – still unidentified – at the state or local level.

If I recall correctly, there were 22 folks who declared that they were running for President as of the time of the first party “debates” (17 Republicans and 5 Democrats). I shudder to think that Curt Schilling might be any less impressive or qualified to be President than the majority of those folks. The 2016 Presidential Campaign has proven to me that what my elementary school teachers told us is true:

Anybody can be President of the United States.

The Philadelphia Business Journal had an item a week or so ago saying that ESPN Radio has hired Donovan McNabb to be a color analyst for NFL game broadcasts on that network. I remember watching some of McNabb’s studio work on FOX Sports and I have to say that I was underwhelmed; his comments seemed to me to be far more “platitudinous” than “insightful”; I expected more from someone who had played QB successfully in the NFL.

In a sense, this gig is a career revival opportunity for McNabb. He was fired at FOX Sports after two DUI arrests and a conviction that sent him to jail briefly. Since those events, McNabb has been contrite and admitted his wrongdoing; this assignment gives him the opportunity to restart his broadcast career. Here is some of what he had to say about that career restart:

“When you make mistakes, obviously there’s consequences with it. Obviously I’ve acknowledged the mistakes that I’ve made and I apologized for it and I know that’s not going to happen again. But when you step away from a job that you truly enjoy doing — I was working at Fox and all the other networks I was a part of after retirement — you feel that drive of continuing on. It’s sort of unfinished business for me. ESPN gave me that opportunity when other networks were there, but nervous about making that decision early on because of the scrutiny they may feel they’d get. Everyone makes mistakes. I’m so excited at getting this opportunity to work with ESPN and get back on track and get more involved in sports and being able to talk about them.”

Indeed, those are the right things to say. Now, comes the time for Donovan McNabb to be sure not to have any more “mistakes” and for him to show that he really does have a future in radio/television as a second career.

Bonne chance.

Yesterday, I said that I do not like arguments about who is the “greatest of all time” in any sport. Today, I will declare that I do not like something that is going to get me in trouble with #2 son because #2 son thinks this is one of the great innovations of modern civilizations:

I do not like – indeed I hate – NFL Red Zone.

I am not going to do an old guy rant here – – Get off my damned lawn! – – about whippersnappers having the attention span of kittens. I recognize that many people of all ages prefer to hop around from game to game to see the big plays and the scoring plays. Indeed, if you are playing in a half-dozen fantasy football leagues, that sort of game-hopping may be of paramount interest to you. I have a different interest in watching a football game. I am not saying that my interest is better or worse than anyone else’s but it is different.

I see a football game as an ebb and flow as teams adjust to what the other team has been doing to thwart what that team has been doing successfully. I enjoy watching the game as it evolves and trying to put myself in the shoes of the offensive and defensive coordinators on both teams as they call the plays. I find that to be an essential ingredient to my enjoyment of a game and that essential ingredient cannot be found on NFL Red Zone.

Instead of feeling excited about being switched from a Steelers/Bills game to watch a 5-yard TD run in the Cowboys/Lions game, I feel angry and want to grab a remote and change back to the game I was watching. Oh, and when they now switch immediately to the Broncos/Falcons game, I am ready to throw my shoe at the TV screen…

Finally, since I am in hot water with #2 son, let me offer as a closing item something he sent to me. This is a comment from Conan O’Brien about the phenomenon known as Pokemon Go:

“The coach of Manchester United has banned all players from Playing Pokemon Go. He apparently doesn’t want any of his team distracted by a fun game where something actually happens…”

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

Late last week, I had a conversation with a neighbor who is a sports fan and an infrequent reader of these rants. He asked me the kind of question that is difficult to answer on the fly:

Who is the most over-rated athlete in all sports?

I gave him the first answer that came close to that criterion that flashed into my head and said, “Danica Patrick.” Fortunately, he knew who Danica Patrick is and so he accepted my answer without forcing me to embellish on the topic or defend my position. Over the past few days, I have had some time to reflect on that question and I would like to present here four candidates who never came close to living up to the reviews:

Danica Patrick: I leave her on the list because her fame and celebrity far exceed any domination of her chosen profession. She has been on the scene as a race car driver for about a decade; in that time, I believe she has won exactly one race. I doubt that comes close to living up to the reviews …

Anna Kournikova: She was around on the pro tennis circuit for only about 5 years and in that time she managed to win exactly zero tournaments as a singles competitor. Even more than Danica Patrick, her celebrity and fame was based on her looks far more than her achievements on a tennis court. The late Bud Collins who was the dean of tennis journalists once said of Kournikova that she was the center of attention at Wimbledon – or some other major tournament I do not recall exactly – because of her beautiful backhand and backside.

Maurice Clarett: After a freshman year that saw him as a star player on a national championship team, he managed to get himself in the middle of an academic scandal at Ohio State and was dismissed from school. He challenged the NFL rule about draft eligibility in court and lost. When he was finally drafted by the Broncos, he never saw the field in an exhibition game let alone a real NFL game. He did play one season in the United Football League before that organization went “paws up”; in that season, he rushed for 154 yards (4.2 yards per carry).

Ryan Leaf: I put him on this list because back in 1998 as the NFL Draft was approaching, there was serious debate about who would be the better NFL QB, Peyton Manning (taken #1) or Ryan Leaf (taken #2). I remember thinking at the time that the Chargers (picking second) would get themselves a quality QB no matter whom the Colts selected at #1. Boy, was I wrong; and so were the folks who thought the Colts should have taken Leaf with the #1 pick.

There is my list. I am sure that folks here can add other names to that list. I toyed with putting Art Schlichter and/or Todd Marinovich on the list but chose Leaf instead. I also toyed with putting Trent Richardson on the list but chose Clarett instead. I could not come up with any MLB or NBA players who fell short of the hype to the degree that these four did. I suspect that others here may come up with worthy candidates and justifications for their inclusion on this infamous listing.

Looking at the world through the opposite end of the telescope, I really do not like arguments about who is the “best whatever of all time”. Let me use the example of “best basketball player of all time” as an example. For the sake of argument here, assume that I believe that Magic Johnson was the best player ever and two other folks believe the right answer is either Michael Jordan or Bill Russell. Here is my problem in a nutshell:

In order to bolster my assertion and advance my argument in favor of Magic Johnson (a great player to be sure), I need to find fault with and denigrate to some extent the achievements of both Michael Jordan and Bill Russell (both great players to be sure). My preference in a situation like that concocted one is to acknowledge and celebrate the greatness of all three players and to marvel in the skills and achievements of all of them.
[Aside: In a similar vein, the baseball arbitration system is set up to create the same kind of adversarial relationship where no such relationship need exist. In order for a team to justify its lower offer to a player than the player demands, it has to show that the player is not as good as the player claims to be. Just what both sides need to advance a constructive relationship over the short term let along the long term.]

Ichiro got his 3000th hit in MLB on Sunday against the Rockies. If he is not a first-ballot Hall of Fame inductee, they ought to initiate drug testing on all the voters for the Hall of Fame.

The NFL cancelled the Hall of Fame Game on Sunday because the playing field was unsafe. The league and the NFLPA jointly said that the cancellation was because player safety was paramount. Actually, a large portion of the decision was that player safety was important and the game itself was barely up to the level of meaningless. Nonetheless, give all those folks credit for canceling a game that would have been played under sub-standard conditions.

[Aside: I wonder if Roger Goodell will find a way to blame this fiasco on Tom Brady.]

Here is the thing that gets me. After last year’s Hall of Fame Game, players roundly criticized the field as unsafe and unplayable. The stadium folks had a year to get the field into “playing shape” and botched that responsibility about as badly as one could imagine. Here is an interesting speculation:

This year will prove conclusively that there can be an induction ceremony for the Hall of Fame without a meaningless 5th exhibition game for 2 of the 32 NFL teams. So, might this lead the league – and the NFLPA – to conclude that the Hall of Fame Game should go the way of the late-but-hardly-lamented Playoff Bowl?

We can only hope …

Finally, here is a comment from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times with regard to the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony from last weekend:

“Brett Favre said he wanted his induction speech at Saturday’s Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinement to mirror his career.

“Which explains why he quit speaking and then re-started three times.”

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

Just last week, I wrote about Stephan Jaeger shooting a 58 on the Web.com golf tour. It was only the third round of its kind in pro golf history. Last weekend, Jim Furyk shot a 58 in a PGA event – the first time that has happened. Since “things happen in threes”, I think I will put an end to the suspense here and go out and play some golf.

I can shoot 58 for nine holes and we can then put all of this to rest.

Contrast that upbeat story related to golf with this less-than-rosy one. Nike announced last week that they were getting out of the golf business. Actually, that was a bit of an overstatement; Nike will discontinue making golf clubs, golf balls and golf bags; Nike will continue to make golf shoes and a somewhat curtailed line of golf apparel. The sport of golf is in decline; it hit a peak about 15 years ago and it is now definitely in decline.

There are surely economic and demographic factors that play into that decline in a highly significant way. I think that a contributing factor – not a major factor but not an inconsequential one either – is the way that the PGA and the TV networks tied themselves to the vast popularity of Tiger Woods. Ten or fifteen years ago, TV coverage of tournaments consisted of covering whatever Tiger Woods was doing at the moment notwithstanding whatever else was happening on the course. The PGA rode that horse to death to the point that it gave short shrift to other golfers who were also playing well and who could have developed a significant following if allowed to get some breathing room in “publicity space”.

Tiger Woods crashed – literally – and burned on the night that his ex-wife found out about his dalliances and rushed out to “save him” by crashing in the window of his car with a nine-iron after his car ran into a fire hydrant. He has not been the same competitor since then and now he is so absent from anything related to the PGA that there is a void when it comes to fan icons. The TV networks can move on from this situation simply by offering less money for future TV rights to anything other than the majors. The PGA, on the other hand, needs to roll up its sleeves and work to create a new set of icons for fans to follow.

In previous times, golf had Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player on the scene at the same time. The PGA did not “pick one” of them; the PGA reveled in the fact that all three had significant numbers of followers. The PGA had better get back to that mode of thinking quickly because if TV ratings for everything other than the majors continue to fall, golf will not only be in decline, golf will be in danger.

The Yankees announced that A-Rod will play his final game as a Yankee this week and will then remain part of the organization as a front office “special advisor” and as an instructor for the team. A-Rod is as polarizing a figure in baseball as Pete Rose is. He was clearly an outstanding player; he was also clearly a drug-cheat. He has been on the baseball scene for more than 2 decades; his performance on the field this year will make people remember that his career ended with a whimper; they ought not forget some of the great years that preceded this one. The Yankees made it clear that A-Rod’s player’s contract would be paid in full; he is owed the balance of the $21M he is to make for this season and another $21M for 2017.

The countdown can begin right now for the first column to appear arguing the merits of A-Rod’s inclusion in the Hall of Fame. May I please ask anyone so tempted to write one of those pieces to take a deep breath and wait for about 5 years when A-rod’s name will be on the Hall of Fame ballot to offer such opinions? We do not need 5 full years of that sort of rhetoric.

Fans of baseball teams that are “sellers” at the trade deadline can feel dejected about the way a season is going for their heroes and usually console themselves with the thought that the “prospects” the team got will make things right in the future. I would have to imagine that Yankees’ fans had to be doubly dejected to see the team as “sellers” this year given that the team started the season with a $228M payroll and this is not the sort of thing that is supposed to happen to a team spending that kind of money. Moreover, the same guys who assembled the roster that posted this “disappointing season” are the same ones who are selecting the “prospects” that they want from other teams in trades. Hmmm…

I watched a little bit of the Opening Ceremony in Rio last Friday night. Even my long-suffering wife who loves that sort of pageantry could not make it through the entire evening; she dozed off and then went to bed after about an hour and a half. We were not alone in our disinterest here; ratings for this Opening Ceremony were down 25% as compared to the Opening Ceremony in London in 2012.

I realize that NBC spent a ton of money to secure these TV rights and that they have to sell ads to make up that expenditure. Having said that, do you think it would have been possible for them to cram any more ads and/or self-promotional spots into their coverage? I think I would need an abacus to count the total number they had. And remember, it was all of a 1-hour tape delay.

Just for fun, here is an observation from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times from last weekend regarding the Rio Olympics:

The official birth control of the Rio Olympic Athletes Village is:

a) 450,000 Durex condoms

b) the Pokemon Go app

Last week, Brad Rock had a column in the Deseret News that I suggest you read in its entirety because I do not think that I can summarize it sufficiently. Some people have suggested that big-time football will see its demise because mothers will not allow their sons to play football due to the danger of head injuries; some people have suggested that big-time football will die because the excess money involved with the game will corrupt it to the core. I am not a soothsayer – and Brad Rock does not pretend to be – but he suggests a different danger that confronts big-time college football. It is worth your time to read this.

Finally, since I spoke about golf above, here is a comment from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald about golf:

“Hidden Valley Golf Course in Lincoln reported golf ball-sized hail. How confusing was this for golfer searching for their lost ball the next morning?

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

Last week, the Washington Post had a report that Charles Barkley will host a new TV show – to make its debut next year on TNT – where he will examine “race, class and cultural differences” in our society. The working title for the show is “The Race Card”. This program has the potential to be very important and constructive for a wide audience and this program has the potential for self-immolation. Clearly, I would prefer the former outcome but even though I would root for that, I have to acknowledge that “crash and burn” is a real possibility.

Charles Barkley is not shy about sharing his opinions and feelings and his opinions are never ones that are universally held throughout society. Here is an overview of what he will try to do:

“… bring [race and cultural tensions] to the forefront, and create a dialogue, and he’s going to bring a Who’s Who [of people] with him to both dramatize it, to opine on it, to participate. And he hopes it’s sort of a lightning rod, and a really constructive dialogue.”

I can assure you that I will be watching for this program and hoping that it succeeds. And, simply because Charles Barkley has been himself “sort of a lightning rod” in the past, there will be some who tune in because they think this will be equivalent to inviting Howard Stern to a church social.

There was another report that caught my eye recently regarding the Monday Night Football game this year that will be played in Mexico City (Raiders/Texans on 21 November). The game will take place in Azteca Stadium there and the venue seats 98,500 people. The NFL reported that after tickets for the game went on sale, the game was a sellout “within minutes”. This is scheduled as a home game for the Raiders; clearly, this will be the largest home attendance that the team will see this year.

The reason that report caught my eye is because it points to the potential for the NFL to expand revenues in international settings. Roger Goodell – like Charles Barkley – has been a lightning rod for the last several years with regard to his role as the league disciplinarian. [Aside: Back in September 2014, I wrote here that Goodell ought not be the league disciplinarian because it interferes with his main job – growing the revenue for the NFL.] This show of support for the NFL product in an international venue seemed to be an indicator that Goodell’s “vision” for annual revenue of $25B for the NFL by 2027 might just be realistic.

Consider that in 2010, the NFL revenue was $8.5B and in 2015 the NFL revenue was $13.1B. In case your calculator is not handy, that is an increase of 54% in 5 years. If you extrapolate that sort of increasing revenue over the next decade you will see that NFL revenue in 2025 would be in excess of $30B. Since it becomes much more difficult to sustain that level of growth as the base for calculating the growth expands, even the NFL has to accept the reality that growth will slow – – and yet an annual revenue of $25B in 2027 might be achievable.

This is what Roger Goodell is hired by the owners to accomplish; that is why he enjoys support among the owners. By the way, the players ought to appreciate what he is doing – and what he is seeking to accomplish – because roughly half of all the league revenue shows up in players’ contracts. If the league revenue were to grow by $12B in the next decade, then player salaries will grow by $6B. Even if the players may feel that they deserve a slightly higher percentage of the gross revenue than they are currently receiving, it is not as if they are the recipients of chump change.

The way I see it, the single largest obstacle in the way of the NFL growing to the levels that Roger Goodell has envisioned is continued labor peace. The current CBA extends through 2020; that is the timeframe where this growth engine could hit a speed bump – – or it could find a bridge over troubled waters and come to suitable compromise(s). Therein lies the great unknown in all of this.

How will the league grow revenues between now and 2025 – – assuming labor peace beyond 2020?

1. International expansion: The league maintains they want to put a franchise in London. I think that is not a good idea but it is certainly not so disastrous that it would topple the league if they did it and it turned out to be as bad as I think it would be. I think the NFL can continue to play individual games in international venues (London, Mexico City, Tokyo, Calgary, Berlin, Beijing). With significant attendance at those games, interest there will grow in the NFL product which will open doors for more TV rights fees abroad and for more merchandise sales.

2. More TV games: Notice, I did not say more games here; while I would enjoy seeing an 18-game NFL regular season schedule, I recognize that player safety issues stand in the way of having that happen in the near future. However, the NFL has gone from “Sunday-only” to “Sunday and Monday” to “Sunday and Sunday Night and Monday” to “Sunday and Sunday Night and Monday and Thursday” in its scheduling. What that does is put more games on the air in a national audience setting. That attracts more viewers; that means ratings go up; that means more ad dollars; that means higher TV rights fees and that increases revenues.

Saturday is a “set-aside” for the NFL so that they do not poach on the long-standing tradition of college football games on Saturday.

Therefore, Tuesday and Wednesday are still in play. Do not discount those possibilities…

Finally, since I talked about Charles Barkley above, here is an item from Gregg Drinnan in his Keeping Score blog:

“A piece of advice from the always relevant Charles Barkley: ‘Don’t get in a fight with somebody who’s ugly. They got nothing to lose.’”

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

I have never been a fan of Moneyball. I thought the book was shallow and self-evident if you believed the implied premise that this approach to building a baseball team was transferable to each and every other situation in MLB. I tried to watch the movie and did not make it past the first 15 or 20 minutes. Billy Beane continues to receive the sort of accolades one usually associates with a true visionary. My problem is that true visionaries have successes at least once in a while.

The A’s last won a World Series in 1989; that happened before Beane was the GM in Oakland; if fact, that was before Beane was even hired as a scout in Oakland. The idea behind Moneyball is to find value in players such that the team can win without having an outrageously expensive payroll. As I said above, the premise is sort of self-evident. However, what Moneyball seems not to be able to address is this:

Once you find a valuable player – or two or three – and the on field performance demonstrates that they are worthy of more than some sort of minimal salary, how does the team keep some of them as the foundation for building a team with other new “value discoveries” that the genius GM will uncover?

I assert that the A’s have not yet figured out how to do that simply because of the top-shelf players that they have had on their roster “on the cheap” and whom they traded away to other teams for lesser performance. I am not going to pretend here to have done hours upon hours of research to come up with these examples because I did not. I suspect that there are more examples – and better examples – of the point I want to make here but I have not had the time or inclination to do the work to uncover them. Nevertheless:

The A’s had Josh Donaldson playing third base for them. Rather than face up to the fact that he was going to cost a lot more money in his next contract negotiation, they traded him away for an inferior third baseman, two pitchers that have yet to do anything in MLB and a prospect at shortstop who has yet to see action in MLB. They traded away performance and got little if any value in return.

The A’s had Ben Zobrist playing second base for them. They traded him away for a young pitcher who has a 4.68 ERA this year and another pitcher they traded away before he ever saw the parent club.

The A’s had Nelson Cruz in their minor league system for about 5 years and never found a way to see that he might be a major league hitter. They traded him to the Brewers in 2004; the Brewers traded him to the Rangers in 2006 and Cruz is still playing productively as a DH in 2016. Back in 2004, the A’s received an infielder who appeared in 51 games for them and batted .161.

The A’s had outfielder Yoenis Cespedes on their roster. Despite his All-Star level performance, they traded him to the Red Sox for John Lester – whom they failed to keep, he appeared in a total of 11 games for the A’s – and Jonny Gomes.

I am not trying to make the case that the A’s had tons of Hall of Fame quality players that they gave away for nothing; that is not the point. What they did have were solid MLB players or better and they got rid of them to save money and did not get any “Moneyball-value-players” in return. As of this morning, the A’s are 47-60 and are sitting comfortably in last place in the AL West. They have a run differential of minus-85 which is by far the worst in the AL. for the last 10 years (since 2006), the A’s cumulative record is 867-859. That is a winning percentage of .502.

That winning percentage over a decade says “mediocrity” to me and not “visionary genius”.

Enough negativity for the day … There are two positive things that happened last week which I want to mention today. The Web.com Tour is sort of like the AAA affiliate of the PGA Tour; players on the Web.com Tour have not yet made it to the main tour and almost all of them aspire to do so. This “developmental tour” if you will, was originally known as the Ben Hogan Tour and most recently as the Nationwide Tour. Stephan Jaeger is one of the players on the Web.com Tour and last week all he did was to shoot a round of 58.

To put that in perspective, this is only the third time in the history of pro golf that a player has carded a 58.

Moreover, this was not a mere flash-in-the-pan round where everything was dropping for him. In the other 3 rounds of the tournament, Jaeger shot 65,64,63 meaning that his total for the four rounds of the tournament was 250.

The previous US record for low score in a 72-hole professional tournament was 254. Jaeger broke that record by 4 strokes.

The other positive happening from last week was an announcement by the NBPA saying that retired NBA players who had accumulated 3-years of tenure in the league will get health insurance provided by the NBPA. Open enrollment will begin in October 2016 and coverage will commence on Jan 1 2017. The vote to make this happen was passed unanimously by the players.

Kudos to the NBA players and the NBPA for this classy move.

Finally, Brad Dickson had this comment in the Omaha World-Herald recently. It brings together the current political debates in the US with the world of sports.

“Democrats say they want to put an end to the rich getting richer on the backs of the middle and lower classes.

“In that case, they can start by investigating how the Golden State Warriors got Kevin Durant.”

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

Late last week, there were reports that the NFL could and would fine the Dallas Cowboys $250K because the Cowboys had 3 players suspended for 4 or more games at the start of the 2016 season. That was the first time I had heard of that provision of the NFL rules and I wondered if this was something that had always been in place – and never hit the public spotlight – or if this was a new provision of the rules as more scrutiny on player anti-social behaviors has increased. In any case, I did not try to go and od that research because I was immediately confronted with another aspect of this report:

What a feckless and meaningless punishment this is!

Annually, Forbes evaluates sporting franchises and puts a value on them. The latest estimate I can find for the Cowboys is $3.2B. Forbes also does an annual listing of the net worth of the country’s richest folks. The latest estimate I can find for Jerry Jones is $5B.

Now the NFL is going to fine someone – maybe the Cowboys and maybe Jerry Jones himself that was not clear – $250K for this violation of the rules. Nominally, one of the reasons for fines or punishments in general is to provide some measure of deterrent. The rule should be in place for a good and sufficient reason and in this case I guess you could say that it is in the NFL’s best interest to present a sociable face to the public rather than an anti-social face to the public. So, on the assumption that this issue is worthy of making a rule over, one has to consider what might or might not be a deterrent to teams or owners when it comes to breaking that rule.

Now, go back and look at those numbers. The fine of $250K is meaningless to either the Cowboys or to Jerry Jones. Consider:

The Cowboys average attendance is in the neighborhood of 75,000 folks for 8 home games every year. Assume that only 10,000 cars/vans/etc. are driven to each game and parked for the game. If the parking fee were $25, the Cowboys would take in $250K for each game simply in parking fees.
Oh, they probably get more cars driven to each game and you can be sure the average car pays more than $25 to park there…

Now if the fine is personally going to Jerry Jones instead of the Cowboys, please consider his approximate net worth of $5B and what a $250K fine might mean to him. Reducing this to numbers we may all be able to relate to, imagine that you had a bank account with 5 thousand dollars in it and you were issued a fine of 25 cents. Would that fine make you sit up and take notice and say to yourself that you better shape up, bucko, because this sort of assault on the exchequer cannot be sustained?

The fine is meaningless. Given that the fine is meaningless, there is no deterrent to the Cowboys or to Jerry Jones to do anything differently tomorrow than they did yesterday. That has to mean that this is not all that important to the NFL and that raises the question why this rule is there in the first place.

Take yourself back in time a couple of years when the Miami Dolphins were the center of attention in the football world because of the bullying allegations made by Jonathan Martin with regard to his offensive line teammates. One of the outcomes from all of that was that the Dolphins fired their OL coach, Jim Turner and one of the revelations of the investigations done in that matter revealed that Turner had purchased inflatable sex-dolls for the players as Christmas presents. Coach Turner has not been involved with football for the last couple of years; I have no idea if that was a self-imposed exile or if no team or coaching staff would get within a country mile of him. It really makes no difference.

This year, Jim Turner got a job as the OL coach at Texas A&M. Assuming that he is good at what he does as an OL coach – I have no idea if that is the case or not and really do not care – restarting his career progression at a major SEC school makes good sense. What does not make good sense is getting back in the news rather quickly and in a not-so-positive light.

Turner – and another assistant coach for the Aggies – are now suspended without pay and have been directed by the university to perform community service hours for “inappropriate comments they made at an event for female fans.”

According to reports, the comments included juvenile changes in the school fight song to “fire-up” the female fans and the lessons provided to the female fans about the game of football were laced with double-entendre and sexual innuendo to include descriptions such as:

No penetration

Never bend over

You don’t want to end up on your back

Let me be clear; this is not sexual predation in any way. Let me be equally clear; this is the sort of stuff that would get junior high school boys gigging on a playground somewhere. This attempt at comedy – and I am giving them the benefit of the doubt that all they were trying to do was to be funny – is hopelessly lame and has no place in a university setting. In the realm of “Thank God for small favors”, perhaps we can be glad he did not bring any of his inflatable dolls to the event put on especially for female fans.

Memo to Coach Turner – and the other suspended assistant coach: If you want to do edgy comedy, get out of the football business. If you want to be in the football business, drop the edgy comedy.

Finally, here is a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“Hockey Hall of Fame finally inducted Eric Lindros, out of the NHL since 2007, after passing him over six times. Must have had a hell of a retirement year!”

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

Last year, the folks who stage the College Football Playoff (CFP) had an idea. You could call it a “bold idea” or you could call it a “dumb idea” depending on the level of charity in your soul. They decided to play the semi-final games of the CFP on New Year’s Eve and said at the outset that they were hoping to create a new tradition in America with regard to how people would celebrate New Year’s Eve. Let me be charitable here and say that did not work very well.

I like college football as much as anyone and probably more than most. I had other plans for New Year’s Eve last year and so I set my VCR up to record the games and I watched them when I got home. Lots of other people went to New Year’s Eve parties and could only watch the game out of the corner of their eye and with the sound on mute. Still others were hammered beyond measure and would not have known they were watching a football game as opposed to driving a milk wagon. The result was that TV ratings were horrible – and TV ratings are critical to the CFP concept.

At the core, the CFP was sold to the various football conferences as a way to rake in a ton of money from the TV deal that the CFP could demand. Without TV money as the underpinning, the BCS system would still be in place.

Any serious drop in ratings has to be taken very seriously by the CFP mavens because continued low ratings will mean smaller TV dollars from advertisers and therefore smaller TV dollars from the networks to the schools.

The “bold idea” of changing the American tradition with regard to the celebration of New Year’s Eve is looking like a “dumb idea” for the moment. But give the CFP folks credit; they recognize that they have dealt a losing hand and they are looking to try to fix it. Here is the new idea:

College football is associated with Saturday in the US. [Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain selling you games on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday nights…] Thus, the default option will be to play the semi-final games on the Saturday before New Year’s Eve.

That sounds like an easy solution until you recognize that Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve are exactly one week apart and that means the games could take place on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day – and the CFP folks realize that is a non-starter.

In 2016, New Year’s Eve is a Saturday; playing the games on the Saturday before New Year’s Eve would put the games on Christmas Eve. That will not happen but the games will start an hour earlier than they did last year (3:00 PM and 7:00 PM EST) with the idea that this will fit better into the party schedule of many people. It is a move in the right direction – – but it probably ought to be moved back even earlier in the day since it is not a workday.

In 2017, New Year’s Eve is a Sunday and the CFP does not want to compete in a 3-way goat-rodeo with the NFL and New Year’s Eve parties. Next year, the game will be played on Saturday 30 December. And so it goes…

The CFP idea is a good idea. It may someday need to be expanded to 6-teams or 8-teams; if that time comes, we can deal with it then. What the CFP has to avoid is to damage itself with self-inflicted wounds. The New Years’ Eve scheduling idea was potentially a self-inflicted wound and the mavens in charge chose to move off their initial idea quickly. Take that as a good sign.

Moving up the ladder a step, the NY Jets and Ryan Fitzpatrick finally reached a deal. It would seem from the outside that both sides got much of what they wanted after about 5 months or wrangling.

The Jets did not want to be saddled with a big long term deal given that Fitzpatrick is 33 years old and that last year was – by far – the best year he ever had. If last year is really a true indicator of his career arc he is the latest of late bloomers. Should he equal last year’s performance and not regress to the mean, the Jets should be happy campers indeed. The deal they gave Fitzpatrick was for 1-year and $12M guaranteed.

The Jets had offered 3-years and $24M with either $10M or $12M guaranteed depending on which reports you read. Other than starting QBs working on their rookie contracts, $8M per year as a starting QB in the NFL has become akin to chump change. Fitzpatrick did not want to be painted into that corner for what could be the rest of his career. So, he gets about 50% more this year and then can be a free agent and go through all of this again next off-season depending on how well he plays in 2016.

Truth be told, neither side had much leverage here. No other NFL teams were burning up the phone lines calling to offer Fitzpatrick a long-term deal at any sort of annual number he might like. On the other side, the Jets faced the possibility of heading into the season – coming off a very productive 2015 – with a QB depth chart that read:

Geno Smith
Bryce Petty
Christian Hackenberg

Speaking completely about 2016, that depth chart is a losing proposition; the Jets have playoff aspirations in 2016 and if those are the 3 QBs who will divvy up the 16 games on the schedule, those aspirations will turn to desperations. The Jets needed Fitzpatrick and no one else made him any viable offers. Finally, the two sides managed to sit down and make all of this work.

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

“Shaquille O’Neal spent four days in Cuba this week as a U.S. State Department ‘sports envoy.’ There is a phrase for that: ‘Waste of tax dollars.’”

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

In late April, Jason Whitlock posted an interesting article on his blog J.School.com. I do not always agree with Jason Whitlock but his work is always well-reasoned and well-written; that makes his work interesting and thought-provoking. After Steph Curry’s knee injury, Whitlock wrote that this was the demise of the 82-game NBA regular season. His point was that more and more teams would move to follow the Spurs’ model of playing star players in fewer games rendering the regular season games even thinner gruel than many of them are. I do not know if other teams will react that way; but if I were an NBA coach, I would give my top guys a few days off in the middle of the season.

However, what Whitlock did next was not to lament the soon-to-be-dilapidated state of the NBA regular season. Instead he had a bold idea for how to make it all work. You can – and should – read it in its entirety here but I will summarize it anyhow:

1. Cut the regular season to 70 games; start in mid-October; play a 40-game schedule to end on New Year’s Day.

2. Top team in the East and Top Team in the West after 40 games play a single game at a neutral site.

3. Create a mid-season classic tournament among 4 teams and offer $20M to the winning team to split up however the team chooses.

4. Play the remaining 30 game schedule in a 15-week period. Pay “win-bonuses” for those final 30 games to keep stars involved and to keep teams from tanking.

While I do not subscribe to all of the details here, I do think this is a creative way to look at the problem of boring regular season NBA games and to try to minimize the boredom going forward. Since I read that piece about 3 months ago, I have been trying to come up with some ideas of my own related to this subject. Here is what I came up with:

1. Cut the regular season from 82 games to 58 games. Each team would play every other team twice on a home-and-home basis. By concentrating the regular season, each game will mean more to each team.

2. Start in mid-October as Jason suggests and have the 58 games over and done with by Feb 10.

3. Start the playoffs proximal to Valentine’s Day and make the playoffs double elimination with five and seven game series between teams to determine who moves on and who is eliminated.

I am sure that my idea is imperfect but it is another way of looking at making the regular season a tad more meaningful and increasing the number of playoff games – the ones that are far more interesting to start with – for TV consumption.

Switching gears here, last year there was a short Internet buzz about a high school kid in California who was playing high school football and was 7-feet tall and weighed 450 pounds. People said he was the biggest football player in the world. The buzz died down as the Internet moved on to become fascinated with pictures of kittens and the dating status of various celebrities. Well that young man’s name was John Krahn and he is back in the news.

Krahn graduated from high school last year and received a couple of “walk-on invitations” from Division I football schools and “some Division II offers”. Obviously, I never saw him play; I would suspect from his size that speed would not be one of his great assets. So, instead of giving up football or taking one of the Division II offers, Krahn has enrolled in Georgia Prep Sports Academy in Decatur, GA where he can work on 2 things simultaneously:

1. He will take advanced high school courses to make himself academically attractive to Division I schools.

2. He will work with a trainer to get his weight down to about 350 lbs and he will work on his blocking technique(s).

According to reports, he is already down to about 400 lbs and he works out daily with a former NFL defensive end. His routine is to do strength and conditioning work on weekdays and then to take part in a 2-hour “technique training” session every Saturday. If successful, Krahn might land himself a Division I scholarship and still have 4 years of eligibility left instead of going to a school, walking on and using up part of his eligibility getting into football shape and learning the techniques of his craft.

That sounds rather mature and dedicated to me and it does not have a whiff of “entitlement” in it. As I said, I have no idea what this kid’s God-given talents may or may not be. However, if he works at this to the point where he gets a Division I scholarship to play football, I will be rooting for him.

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

“Jose Altuve, the Astros’ mighty-mite second baseman, is getting his own bobblehead night on Aug. 27.

“Just wondering: Has a guy ever been able to see eye-to-eye with his bobblehead before?”

Question for Dwight Perry … Ever heard of Eddie Gaedel?

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

The Rio Olympics will begin in just over a week. I am sure you read that the Australian team refused to take their place in the Olympic Village a couple of days ago because when they saw their quarters they noticed some wetness on the walls and it turned out to be a “sewage leak”. The mayor of Rio tossed off their protest by saying he would get them a kangaroo as a pet for their stay in the Olympic Village. I do not know about you, but I think the mayor of Rio has fundamentally missed the point here.

If that were some sort of isolated event, you could ignore it and assume it will all be fixed and in working order by the end of next week. However, reports in the Washington Post point to a bigger problem. As of this morning, only 12 of the 31 buildings – they are 17-story structures – in the Olympic Village have passed safety inspections. Think about that for a moment. You would think that the Australians would have been directed to quarters that had passed safety inspections and look what they found.

The Post also cites an official of the Australian Olympic Committee saying that when they performed a stress test of their own by turning on all the faucets and flushing toilets simultaneously, here is what they experienced:

“Water came down walls, there was a strong smell of gas in some apartments and there was shorting in the electrical wiring.”

I guess the only thing to say in that situation is:

Enjoy your stay.

The Australian team is not alone in experiencing problems in the Olympic Village. The team from Belarus refused to move its athletes into the quarters assigned to them due to a “lack of hot water and a failing sewage system”.

Enjoy your stay.

In other Olympics news, the IOC did not take a stand on doping. When the anti-doping agencies recommended that the Russian team be barred from the Games because there was evidence that the doping was “state-suggested” if not “state-sponsored”. The IOC could have taken a stand here and actually seized the moral high ground on this issue – a perch they rarely if ever enjoy. However, taking that position would put them squarely in opposition to the Russian IOC and the Russian state system that clearly greased more than a couple of palms to secure the put on the Sochi Winter Games. Not surprisingly, the IOC chose not to take the high road here and deferred judgment to the international federations that oversee the various sports to determine the eligibility of each Russian athlete.

Compounding this travesty of justice, the one individual who is personally banned from the Olympics is the Russian 800-meter runner who blew the whistle on the whole “state-encouraged” doping system that caused all of this. She is banned; she cannot compete under a non-national flag as can athletes from countries that are war-torn and cannot send athletes to the Games. Her name is Yula Stepanova; she was not likely to medal in these Games; now she will not be able even to show up and try.

I rarely have anything good to say about the IOC. It is tempting to blame them for the failure of Brazil to live up to the promises it made to the IOC to secure these Games. However, I will give them a pass on that; the blame there belongs to the Brazilians. However, given the way this “state-encouraged” doping situation has unfolded and has concluded, it is absolutely fair to ask a simple question:

If Russian athletes who were part of the “state-encouraged” doping system are allowed to participate and the individual who brought it all to light is not allowed to participate, what is the anti-doping program of the IOC all about?

This is the time of year when NFL teams come together to prepare for the upcoming season and when news nuggets emerge from the individual teams:

Browns: Josh Gordon was conditionally re-instated by Roger Goodell subject to a 4-game suspension. That is good news for the Browns; they need all the help they can get. The bad news is that Gordon has a quadriceps injury that will need at least 2 weeks of rehab before he can get back to working with the team.

Cowboys: Randy Gregory was already suspended for the first 4 games of the 2016 season for multiple substance-abuse violations. The report now is that he has failed yet another test and may not play at all in 2016.

Falcons: The team released Devin Hester who holds the NFL record for returns for a touchdown. Hester missed much of last season with a foot injury and had off-season surgery; his release indicates to me that his recovery has not been complete. In reading the report, I learned that Hester is 33 years old; if you had asked me how old I thought he was, I probably would have guessed 28 or 29.

Niners: Anthony Davis – the offensive tackle that retired in June 2015 – now says he has sought reinstatement from the league by rescinding his retirement letter. That is good news for the Niners in that they need OL help and Davis was a quality player when he chose to retire to promote his “mental health”. Davis and Niners’ GM. Trent Baalke have had their issues in the past; it will be interesting to see what level of détente can be achieved there.

Finally, here is a comment from late-night comedian Jimmy Fallon:

“Happy Birthday to legendary boxer Sugar Ray Leonard, who turned 60. You can tell he’s getting older by his new name — Splenda Ray Leonard.”

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