The Sports Curmudgeon

The NBA Draft is tonight. Over the past several weeks, there was some buzz around the question:

Who will the Sixers take with the first pick? – – or alternatively – –

Who will suffer the fate of having to play for the Sixers?

That “controversy” went the way of all flesh earlier this week when the Sixers announced that they will take Ben Simmons with the #1 pick. Simmons is a gifted player; if you happened to see the game he played against Kentucky when LSU beat the Wildcats handily, you know he has skills. People have questioned his “passion for the game”. Not having had the opportunity to do a Vulcan Mind Meld with the young man, I cannot assess his passions or his nonchalances. I do know that one aspect of his game that has yet to develop is an outside jump shot; basically, he is not much of a threat from outside 10 feet.

The Lakers have the second pick and they should take Brandon Ingram in that slot. Ingram is a better scorer than Simmons at this stage of their development but Ingram needs to add strength if he is going to survive in the NBA.

After those two picks, the Celtics are up – and the Celtics really control what is going to happen tonight. Boston has 8 picks in this two-round draft; three in the first round and 5 in the second round. What the Celtics do with all of those picks will determine how the draft goes.

I have a few comments about specific players – ones who get mentioned in reports about team workouts and the like. I will put them in alphabetical order lest anyone impute some meaning to the order here:

Kris Dunn (Providence): I read one report that said he might go as high as #2 to the Lakers. I will be most surprised if that happens. In fact, after watching Providence play a couple of times last year, what I recall is that Dunn was clearly the best player on the Providence team and was a good defensive player; however, going #2 in the draft? Sorry, I do not see that or anything really close to that…

Buddy Hield (Oklahoma): I said this several months ago and I’ll say it again here. He has a great outside shot and great range. However, he does not create shots for himself and his defense is mediocre. I think he might be this year’s version of Jimmer Fredette.

Donta Sabonis (Gonzaga): I love this guy. No one can question his “passion for the game”. And he has what commentators like to call “a high basketball IQ”. He passes very well from the post; he rebounds well and he defends well.

Denzel Valentine (Michigan St.): He has plenty of talent and he is a solid all-around player having had 4 years of top-flight coaching from Tom Izzo.

I have no doubts those 4 players will all go in Round 1 of the draft tonite so let me now turn to my “sleeper pick” for the draft.

Fred Van Vleet (Wichita State): He is not the best “fill in the blank here” as compared to other guards in this draft. There are better shooters, passers, ball handlers etc. However, Van Vleet is very good at everything you want a guard to do – and some of that derives from the fact that like Denzel Valentine, he got 4 years of good coaching in college. I think that a team in need of a point guard – a backup for the first year or two to be sure – would do well to pick up this guy tonight.

There remains some doubt about the Russian track and field team’s participation in the Rio Olympics. The International Track Mavens suspended the Russian team because of widespread doping – and demonstrable involvement by the Russian Track and Field Overseers in providing the drugs and covering up any positive tests. It is a sordid mess indeed.

The IOC seemingly is wavering with regard to allowing the Russian track and field athletes to compete. Technically, the IOC lets the various international federations determine compliance with World Anti-Doping Agency rules and standards. Nonetheless, we all recognize that the IOC answers to a “higher authority” – that being the “highest bidder” for their favors. So, there remains some uncertainty.

This situation is akin to the one we often see with regard to colleges who violate NCAA rules so flagrantly that the NCAA has to impose sanctions on the sports program(s) involved. What happens there – and what seemingly is happening here – is that the real ne’er-do-wells are not really punished but a bunch of athletes are.

The real “bad guys” in the Russian Track and Field Fiasco are the people in the national organization that has been providing PEDs to athletes and then falsifying/covering up test results. Yes, the athletes have probably derived performance benefits from using whatever they tested positive for; but they were not the orchestrators nor the cover-up coordinators. Those miscreants will not be punished in any meaningful way should the Russian team be disinvited to the Rio Games.

Brad Rock found a way to inject a bit of humor into this messy situation with this recent comment in the Deseret News:

“Russia’s track team has been banned from the Olympics due to doping issues.

“IOC officials suspected testosterone was involved when they learned everyone on the women’s team refused to ask for driving directions.”

Finally, Brad Dickson had these two comments about the recent NFL Draft in the Omaha World-Herald:

“The Miami Dolphins are confident they got the best gas mask-wearing, bong hit-taking, accepted-money-from-Ole Miss player available in the draft.”

And …

“A Cleveland Browns fan started a Go Fund Me campaign to pay for therapy for the team’s draft picks. I have nothing to add here.”

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

There are two international soccer tournaments in progress at the moment. The Copa America has reached the semi-finals round where the US team met Argentina last night. Argentina is rated as the #1 team in the world at the moment – whatever that means – and the results last night showed pretty conclusively that the US team is not anywhere near the #2 squad in the world. The final score as 4-0 in favor of the Argentines; I am not sure the game was that close.

Let me not pretend to be an expert when it comes to soccer because I am not. In addition, as I have pointed out here many times, I cannot read minds. With those caveats, let me tell you what I sensed as I watched the Argentina/US game last night:

Soccer is a game of passes; the ball moves from player to player as the team seeks to build up an offensive attack that will result in a shot on the goal.

Last night it looked to me as if the Argentine players knew what they were going to do with the ball as it was on the way to their foot and they seamlessly executed the physical act that made the ball do what was already in their minds.

Meanwhile, the US players seemed to focus on receiving the ball and controlling it. Then, they would seek to determine what to do next.

Argentina played a fluid game; the US played mechanically.

Argentina will play the winner of the Chile/Colombia semi-final game and the US will take on the loser for third place in the Copa America. Chile got to the semi-final game by beating Mexico 7-0 a few days ago. As outclassed as the US team looked last night, they put up much more of a fight against Argentina than Mexico did against Chile. Remember, I do not read minds, but it sure looked to me as if the Mexicans quit against Chile; I never got the sense that the US team quit last night.

In a very small way, I will be rooting for Colombia in their semi-final game against Chile. That has nothing to do with any ties I have to Colombia or any enmity I have towards Chile. It is just that Colombia and the US have already played in this tournament and Argentina and Chile have already played in this tournament. Rather than have two “rematches” to end the tournament, I can root for a semi-final outcome that will produce two fresh matchups.

Meanwhile, across the pond in Europe, the Euro 2016 tournament is coming to the end of Group play and heading into the knockout round. In the Copa America, there have only been a few shocking results – the early dismissal of Brazil, the magnitude of the defeat suffered by Mexico, Costa Rica beating Colombia in the Group phase – but there have been a bunch of surprises in Euro 2016.

Wales and England were in the same Group and Wales was the Group winner. This is the first major international tournament where Wales has advanced since 1958 and the Welsh play the English frequently in “friendlies” or in less prestigious tournament settings. In a total of 112 meetings, England leads the series 67-21-14. Playing to form here, the English beat the Welsh. Nonetheless, Wales won the Group with England finishing second.

Reigning World Cup Champion, Germany won its Group but only scored 3 goals in 3 games. They won because they did not allow a single goal in any of those games.

Croatia beat Spain head-to-head to win that Group. Spain dominated the first 30 minutes of that game and then Croatia seized control. Croatia trailed 1-0 early on but scored in the final minute of the first half and in the final 2 minutes of regulation time to win 2-1.

With one game left in Group play, Iceland is in second place in that group having played 2 tie games. Considering the other national teams in Euro 2016, you would have to call Iceland the outlier or the Cinderella. Their final Group game is against Austria; if they win they are sure to advance to the knockout round.

The games in these tournaments are being shown on ESPN and on FS-1. They are definitely worth checking out…

I watched some – certainly not all – of the TV coverage of the US Open golf tournament last weekend. I have a question for those of you who pay much closer attention to golf than I do:

Is Jordan Speith a significantly slower player than the rest of the guys out there or is it just me?

I felt as if I could go and make a sandwich and eat half of it in the time it took him to line up either a chip shot or a putt.

Since I am off on a track today that passes by sports I normally do not write about, let me ask rhetorically if anyone has paid attention to the WNBA standings early on in this season. The teams have played 12 or 13 games so far in 2016; the regular season in the WNBA consists of 34 games so the season is a bit more than one-third finished.

In the East, there is a race. Five of the six teams there are within 3.5 games of one another.

In the West, there are two winners and the rest of the Conference. Minnesota’s record is 13-0; Los Angeles’ record is 11-1 (guess who they lost to…) All of the other 4 teams are below .500.

Finally, as women’s golf takes on more and more of an international dimension, newspaper copy editors and TV announcers will need to step up their games. Two young Thai women on the tour this year are Sherman Santiwiwatthanaphong and Pornanong Phatlum. Good luck fitting those names into a one-column wide headline or saying them in sequence three times.

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

All of history has not occurred since sometime in the mid-1980s. In the world of sports, that realization often gets lost as people focus on whatever happened in the previous 72 hours and try to proclaim that it is the greatest whatever that ever happened. As I mentioned yesterday, the focus yesterday was on LeBron James and the Cavaliers and their comeback from a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals to become the champions. The adulation hopefully reached its peak on ESPN’s Around the Horn yesterday afternoon. All of the participants used every superlative they could think of to describe what LeBron had done in leading his team to this title.

One panelist said that James and his teams are now 4-2 when they play a Game 7 of a playoff series. In the midst of all the ongoing adulation allow me to point out something that has seemingly been forgotten:

The Boston Celtics – led by Bill Russell – faced a Game 7 on 10 different occasions in the NBA Playoffs.

The Boston Celtics – led by Bill Russell – won all 10 of those Game 7s.

Those of you who have been reading these rants for a while know that I am a big fan of Ichiro. I like the way he focuses on the game, the way he plays the game and the results he gets on the field. Last week, he accumulated enough hits in MLB such that if you add his Japan League hits, the total surpasses Pete Rose’s record of 4,256 base hits. I am not going to argue that Ichiro is now the “Hit King” – or as Rose so inelegantly put it demote Rose to the status of “Hit Queen”. The level of competition in the Japan League is not what it is in MLB on a day to day basis.

Nonetheless, what Ichiro has done – and continues to do – is extraordinary. Consider:

Ichiro came to MLB at the age of 27. In his first year in MLB, he got 242 hits in 157 games.

In his 15.5 seasons in MLB, he has collected 2,980 hits and he had 200 or more hits in each of his first 10 MLB seasons. In those first ten seasons, he averaged 224 hits per season.

In 2004, he had 262 hits. That broke the all-time record for hits in a season (257) held previously by George Sisler since 1920.

This season – at age 42 – he is hitting .349 in his first 58 games.

Oh, by the way, he is an outstanding defensive outfielder; and even at age 42, a runner takes a risk challenging his arm.

Just because Ichiro is in the midst of doing something outstanding and we get to see it now does not mean that what Pete Rose did a few decades ago should be – or needs to be – degraded in some way. This is exactly the reason I do not like arguments about “the greatest of all time”. In order to make points in favor of one player or one team as the “greatest of all time” one has to find fault with some other player or team to undermine their claim to “the top spot”.

Pete Rose and Ichiro are both great hitters; there is no need to find reasons to denigrate either one. Michael Jordan and LeBron James are both great players; there is no need to find reasons to denigrate either one. Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem are all great centers; there is no need to denigrate any of them. John Elway, Joe Montana and Tom Brady are all great QBs; there is no need to denigrate any of them – or to try to justify why John Unitas is not on the list I just provided.

Bob Molinaro had this item in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot last week and it demonstrates what I mean about downplaying the achievements of others in order to prop up a claim to greatness:

“Throwing shade: The manner in which Ichiro and Rose moved to the top of the hit list – playing small ball and hitting ’em where they ain’t – recalls what Mickey Mantle said when Rose broke Ty Cobb’s record: ‘If I’d a hit that many singles, I’d a wore a dress.’”

Meanwhile, Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times ran the numbers and arrived at this conclusion last week:

“Entering play Friday, Marlins outfielder Ichiro Suzuki — just 21 hits shy of 3,000 — could go 0 for his next 448 and still be a career .300 hitter.”

Whatever …

Last week, I mentioned that the Detroit Lions will add sideline cheerleaders to their “entertainment experience” starting this season. If I have counted correctly, that means there are only 6 of the 32 NFL teams who do not have cheerleaders.

The Bears, Browns, Giants, Packers and Steelers do not have cheerleaders and never have.

The Bills do not have cheerleaders now but had a cheerleading squad from the time the team came into existence (1960) until 2014. Several former members of the squad sued the Bills claiming they were not paid for time spent on the job. The Bills responded by suspending operations/cutting ties with the cheerleading squad.

Then again, the Bills do have Rex Ryan as their coach and many of his pronouncements about the team and its prospects can be considered cheerleading.

Finally, here is Brad Dickson’s summation of the recently concluded Belmont Stakes in the Omaha World-Herald:

“Heavy favorite Exaggerator finished 11th at the Belmont Stakes. However, he told everyone he was fifth.”

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

Now that we know that the Cleveland Cavaliers came back from a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals to win the championship, can we put to rest how this one game and this one series affects the “grand scheme of things” in the history of basketball?

This series does not “validate LeBron James” as the greatest NBA player of all time. He is obviously one of the best players ever; that was evident before this series began and it remains the same now that it is over.

This series does not “validate” all of the statements from “old-time players” that the Warriors are a soft/jump-shooting team who only got lucky last year. The Warriors won 73 games and lost only 9 all season long; they are a great team.

This series does not expose Stephen Curry as some kind of “fraudulent star”. His team lost to another team led by a great player. One team had to lose…

However, most of all, the results of this series does justify putting an end to the hand-wringing columns about the downtrodden Cleveland fans yearning for a championship. They have one; we need not read any more pabulum about their “plight”.

One more note about the NBA playoffs in general … I have watched some of the early games in the College World Series on TV and would like to pose this rhetorical question.

What is worse in 2016:
The calling of balls and strikes in the College World Series – – or – –

The officiating in the NBA Playoffs?

That would be a tough call to make, indeed.

With the playoffs over the NBA looks ahead to the draft later this week – I shall have something to say about that down the line – and then a short off-season where there will be consideration of rule changes for upcoming seasons. In general, I think Adam Silver is a good and positive force as the NBA Commissioner; he is a significant improvement over his predecessor, The Sultan of Smug. However, there are reports that he wants to make a change in the rules that I think is a really bad idea.

According to reports, Adam Silver wants to change the rulebook to eliminate the “Hack-a-Shaq” strategy some teams use by fouling opposing players whose free throw percentage is around 50%. The Commish alleges that this strategy slows the game down (no argument there) and said slowdown is bad for TV (where the NBA derives the vast majority of its revenue). I note that The Commish only “alleges” this to be true since NBA Finals’ ratings were higher than ever this year and advertisers paid more to obtain ad slots on NBA telecasts this year than ever before. That data would seem to indicate that viewers are not tuning out nor are advertisers taking their dollars elsewhere

Basically, changing the rule here done to protect three players from embarrassment and to – nominally – shorten games in which their teams play. Those players are:

Andre Drummond: Career free throw percentage of .380
Dwight Howard: Career free throw percentage of .568
DeAndre Jordan: Career free throw percentage of .421

In a sense, changing the rules here is a reward to these players for their ineptitude at one aspect of the game. If that becomes a basis for rule changes, I surely hope that The Commish did not watch any of the Sixers’ games last year because they had loads of players who demonstrated a high level of ineptitude at many levels of the game.

I can understand that the NBA changed the width of the free throw lane when Wilt Chamberlain was playing simply because he was so big, strong and agile that he turned some games into a dunking display. In that case, the rule change was done to increase competitive balance and to make it more difficult for a great player to dominate games. Here is what I mean by dominate:

In 1961-62, Wilt averaged 50.4 points per game, played in 80 games and averaged 48.5 minutes per game.

In the first 12 years of his career, he averaged 21.1 rebounds per game or higher.

At the same time, Wilt Chamberlain was a poor free throw shooter (career average was .511) and teams would often resort to fouling him intentionally. There was no hue and cry back then to change the rules to prevent that tactic. In fact, it was a strategy that made a lot of sense back then– as does the current strategy.

Here is the real solution to the “problem of slowing down the game” – if indeed such a “problem” exists:

Make those guys work to learn to shoot foul shots.

How do you do that? Well, you do it through the power of the purse. If you want to change rules, penalize those players for poor free throw shooting in such a way that coaches will take them out of games and sit them on the bench in close games in the 4th quarter. That will diminish their value significantly the next time they are in free agency – and that will motivate them to spend lots of time with coaches in gyms practicing and learning to shoot free throws. Do not penalize a team for trying to exploit a weakness on their opponent; if you must “penalize” anyone or anything here, penalize the incompetence.

Finally, I ran across this last item somewhere but neglected to note where I found it so I cannot give credit to the originator:

Q: Why doesn’t Pittsburgh have a pro basketball team?

A: Because if they did, Philadelphia would want one too.

BaDaBing! BadaBoom!!!

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

Sometime last Fall, the Nevada Gaming Commission issued a ruling that Daily Fantasy Sports (Draft Kings and FanDuel) classified as sports betting under Nevada law and that meant that the two companies needed to be licensed by the Gaming Commission. The two companies stopped taking wagers from Nevada residents – or as the companies would say they stopped allowing Nevada residents to play. I have seen nothing to indicate that the Gaming Commission has in fact licensed either of these entities and so I assume that Daily Fantasy Sports as represented by Draft Kings and FanDuel remains off-limits in Nevada.

However, the Gaming Commission is considering a proposal to allow people to bet on fantasy sports through the casinos. US Fantasy is a company that claims to have a system that allows for fantasy betting in a pari-mutuel environment. Please do not ask me for details here because it is not clear to me how all of this would work, but US Fantasy asserts that it could provide Nevada casinos with a “turnkey operation” soon after the receipt of an approval from the Gaming Commission.

There is also something in Nevada called the Nevada Governor’s Gaming Policy Committee. This body is comprised of state legislators, present and former members of the Gaming Commission and “industry leaders” from the gaming industry. That Committee is solidly in favor of adding fantasy sports betting to the menu of offerings in Nevada but they have made it clear in previous statements that they do consider fantasy sports to be gambling and therefore should be subject to regulation to protect the public.

Here is a link to an article from about a week ago that will give you an idea where all of this is now and where it might be heading. One of the things I find interesting here is that in addition to maintaining that Daily Fantasy Sports is not gambling, the folks at FanDuel and Draft Kings have also said that regulations would hinder innovation in that industry. Well, while they have been standing still and fighting “regulation” around the country, it would seem to me that US Fantasy has done a bit of innovating on its own and just may elbow its way into the mix as a competitor in the Daily Fantasy Sports wagering “industry”.

Aaron Hernandez is serving a life sentence as a result of his conviction on charges of murdering Odin Lloyd. Nonetheless, he still faces a double murder charge in a separate incident. He must not have been fully satisfied with his previous representation because he hired a new attorney recently. He hired the man who defended Casey Anthony in her trial involving the death of her 2-year old daughter. Anthony was convicted on charges of lying to the police but was acquitted on the murder charge. Her acquittal at trial determines the fact that she is not guilty of the crime; her status in the court of public opinion is very different; I would estimate that she finds herself somewhere between “Vile Hominid” and “Loathsome Creature” on the social spectrum.

I only mention Casey Anthony here because Aaron Hernandez hired the lawyer who got her off those murder charges to represent him in his double-murder trial. The Sixth Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees anyone charged with a crime the right to “… the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” One consequence of that phrase is that some attorney somewhere has to assist Aaron Henderson in that case just as someone had to assist Casey Anthony in hers.

Let me now say something that will clearly disqualify me from ever serving on any jury in any matter involving Aaron Hernandez – – and/or Casey Anthony for that matter.

I do not think there has been enough soap manufactured in the history of mankind to wash off the sleaze and the slime one would obtain from “assisting in the defence” of Aaron Hernandez.

Back in the 50s and 60s, Mao Zedong declared the Chinese Great Leap Forward. The idea was to change China rapidly from an agrarian subsistence economy to a more industrialized socialist economy that would be part of the international trade picture. I am not here to provide history lessons or economic analyses but let me just say that it did not work even a little bit. I mention this because it seems to me as if the Detroit Lions have just taken the Great Leap Sideways. The Lions have made a decision to do something different from anything they have done before – – and I doubt that it matters a whit.

The Detroit Lions – for the first time in franchise history – will have sideline cheerleaders.

When I read that, this is exactly what I typed on my clipboard:

“Whoop-dee-damned-doo!”

Naturally, such a “momentous” change requires a statement from team execs to put all of this in perspective. Lions’ team president, Ron Wood, stepped up to that responsibility with this pabulum:

“The Ford Family is unwavering in their commitment to improving the Detroit Lions fan experience on and off the field … After thorough consideration and receiving input from our fans through season ticket member surveys and focus groups, we believe that this is an opportunity to elevate our game day entertainment.”

If the Lions want to elevate the game day entertainment, they might start by improving on the team record since 2000. Cumulatively that would be 87-169; that means the Lions only win 34% of the time in this millennium. Forget the cheerleaders; I do not need focus groups to tell me that Detroit fans would prefer better teams on the field.

Finally, Greg Cote had these two comments in the Miami Herald recently. They will tell you all you really need to know about these topics:

“Florida Gators are renaming their football field as ‘Steve Spurrier-Florida Field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.’ Not wordy enough. Throw in a ‘Ball Coach’ reference, too.”

And …

“Will Power won last week’s IndyCar race. Who was second? Dee Termination?”

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

It surely looks as if the NHL will approve an expansion team in Las Vegas at their next league meeting later this month. The cheering has begun in Sin City and pundits around the country – and in Canada too – are starting to take stock of what this might mean. Let me stipulate that my knowledge of hockey is about an eighth of an inch deep but I do have some questions about this decision which will lead me to pay attention to the fate of the Las Vegas Black Knights (that is the rumored team name) in the coming years:

1. There are about a half-dozen NHL teams in the so-called “Sun Belt”; there are seven teams in Canada. If the league looks at those revenue streams individually, I strongly suspect that the seven Canadian teams – none of which made the playoffs this year – all dominate the “Sun Belt” teams. I have long been an advocate for a pro sports franchise in Las Vegas, but the fact of the matter is that Las Vegas is a “Sun Belt” venue.

2. The question for any expansion franchise is this:

Can it build a loyal fanbase?

The Black Knights claim to have more than 14,000 pledges for season tickets in hand. Their arena will seat 17,000 for hockey so even before the team formally exists, the arena is going to be about 82% full. Sounds good … Now the question morphs into something a bit different:

Is this wave of support sustainable? Is it based on the novelty of the NHL coming to Las Vegas or is there a core fanbase there for the long haul?

3. The Black Knights will be the 31st franchise in the NHL. Odd numbers for teams in a league are complicating factors. I would not want to be the guy who has to figure out how to schedule 31 teams for a season if there is a mandate that each team plays a balanced schedule. My intuition says that is not going to work. Ergo:

What does this franchise portend for the future NHL?

It would seem to me that finding a 32nd venue for a team would make life easier for the NHL. It would also seem to me that they should “follow the money” and put that new team in Canada. I am nowhere near conversant enough with Canadian economics and society to proclaim where the best place for a new NHL team might be, but here are cities that come to mind just based on travels in Canada:

Halifax: Population about 350K but geographically “inconvenient”.
Quebec City: Population about 500K but a team failed there in the past.
Regina: Convenient location but population is much smaller here
Saskatoon: Convenient location but population is smaller here.

Then there is always the option to put a team in “Southern Ontario” where there are sizeable population centers but there is also the presence of teams in Toronto, Detroit and Ottawa. Nonetheless, the municipalities of Mississauga, Brampton, London and Hamilton might be considered.

The Black Knights would begin play in the 2017/18 season. I hope it succeeds as a franchise because it might open the way to put the NFL and/or the NBA in Las Vegas too.

In my grazing around the Internet to find topics to rant on, I ran across two things related to the Olympics. The first had to do with the games in Rio and how spending on the athletic venues and on security have left some of the poverty areas there in really bad shape. The slums in Rio are called the favelas; if you do a “Google Images” search on “Rio favelas” you can see some pretty grim living conditions for huge numbers of people in extremely overcrowded conditions. Then do a “Google Images” search for “Rio de Janeiro Olympic venues”. If you flip from one to the other and recognize what might have been done with the billions of dollars that were spent on glitzy sports stadiums and on bribes and on corruption and on security, you will want to go and wash the hand that moved the mouse and clicked on the links to give you those images.

The other item related to the Olympics is depressing because of its silliness. The IOC is poised to approve a package of 5 new sports for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. The Executive Board of the IOC in making these recommendations to the committee as a whole said that approving it would be the “most comprehensive evolution of the Olympics in modern history”. Given that description, one might expect some momentous recommendations here. You make the call:

Karate: OK, that is a martial art; it fits with the idea of “Faster, Higher, Stronger”; it has its origins in Okinawa which is part of Japan. No problem here …

Baseball/Softball: OK, that is a popular sport in Japan which is the host country but haven’t the Olympics been there before? “Evolution” implies a movement in the forward direction and this seems to be a movement back to the past

Skateboarding: Oh swell, another sport with judges handing out numerical scores to make it appear as if one skateboarder is better than the other one.

Surfing: Seriously, now … “Most comprehensive evolution…” You cannot be serious … [/ John McEnroe]

Sports Climbing: Now they are just making stuff up, right?

Oh, just wait… At some time in the future, they may expand this list to include “Synchronized Surfing” and “Team Sports Climbing”. I can’t wait.

Finally, Dwight Perry had this item in the Seattle Times possibly foreshadowing yet another Olympic sport in the future:

“Eighteen two-man teams — wielding shovels, rakes and pick-axes — convened in plot 37A of a cemetery in Debrecen, Hungary, to take part in the national grave-digging contest.

“The winning team of Laszlo Toth and Janos Racz needed less than 34 minutes to card the day’s first 6-under.”

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

Last night, I watched the maiden voyage of FS1’s new program, Speak For Yourself, hosted by Colin Cowherd and Jason Whitlock. It was a good program; it has plenty of potential; it also had a few rough edges. In terms of its competition in the time slot – 6:00PM ET – there is not a big threat out there. In the sports domain, ESPN is running SportsCenter at that time and SportsCenter is eminently missable because you can see it over and over again almost any hour of the day on one of the ESPN channels. Here is what I liked about Speak for Yourself last night:

When people disagreed with one another, they did not shout at or over one another.

The positions taken by the participants were rational and were explained clearly.

Everyone with a speaking role was intelligent and articulate.

Here is what I think the program mavens at FS1 Need to work on with regard to Speak For Yourself:

I wonder if the program would be better suited to a half-hour time format as opposed to the current 1-hour format. Last night, they had the NBA Finals and the Draymond Green suspension to float the discussions. I wonder if they can fill an hour during some of the “sports droughts” that happen at various times of the year.

The show can exist and can flourish even if there are some topics where neither host injects controversial opinions into the discussion. I had the idea that they were stretching some points to make sure there was something a bit outlandish in each discussion. Forcing that kind of stuff can create a bad environment for the show – – see ESPN’s First Take as Exhibit A.

Jason Whitlock should not wear a hat on the show. He is indoors; you are supposed to take your hat off indoors.

Enough television reviewing … Yesterday, I happened to have a conversation with a man who does not read these rants because he is not a sports fan. Nonetheless, he knows that I write them on a regular basis and he asked me what I had written about Brock Turner – the Stanford swimmer who infamously got a light sentence from a judge in a sexual assault case. I told him I had not written anything on the matter and he was surprised because in his mind that was a major happening that touched on the sports world. So, after I got home, I thought about what he said and here is why I had not written about it in the past:

1. The story was extensively reported and there are not a lot of nuances in it. This is not a “he said/she said” matter; the facts are no longer in doubt as a result of a trial in a court. There was a sexual assault and Turner was the perpetrator.

2. According to reports, under California law, the judge has the leeway to apply leniency to sentencing in cases of this type. If those reports are accurate, then the judge made his decision and that is what he gets paid to do. You can agree with it or disagree with it, but you should not demonize the judge; he did what the law allows him to do.

3. You can criticize the self-serving letter that Turner’s father wrote to the judge seeking leniency in this matter. At the same time, I wonder how many parents would not have done essentially the same thing in the same circumstances. You can also look at that letter to the judge as one more foundation piece in an edifice that surrounds Brock Turner with a sense of entitlement. If you do that, I would probably agree with you.

4. The victim also wrote a letter to the judge regarding the sentencing and she – not surprisingly – did not seek any leniency in the matter. That long letter was read verbatim on television by a reporter. That was a sensational TV moment but I wonder if having that letter read on TV – and then again replaying it a jillion times on the Internet – is helping the victim to heal from her suffering. I hope it did; I wish I were more confident that it did.

Damn! I circled back to television reviewing … OK, I have one more TV-related item on my clipboard this morning so let me get it out of the way. I found this in Gregg Drinnan’s blog, Keeping Score, yesterday. Too bad we don’t do TV Bloopers anymore; this would be a good one:

“Here’s what Harold Reynolds, an analyst for the MLB Network, offered up when outfielder Kyle Lewis was selected by the Seattle Mariners in the first round of the free-agent draft on Thursday: ‘He’s 20 years old. That’s what stands out. Most people are 21 at that age.’ . . . You can’t make up stuff like that.”

About a week ago, Madison Bumgarner said that he would like to participate in the Home Run Derby during the All-Star break. Reporters ran with that and lots of people chimed in saying he should do it; someone actually suggested having two different Home Run Derbies – one for pitchers and one for position players. Giant’s manager Bruce Bochy let it be known that he did not want his ace pitcher involved in any such nonsense.

Bochy is right. Rather than TWO Home Run Derbies, what we really need is ZERO Home Run Derbies. The idea has run its course; it was fun while it lasted. It has become a waste of oxygen; it is time to put it six feet under.

Finally, here is an observation regarding fan behavior from Brad Dickson in the Omaha World-Herald:

“Rory McIlroy was almost hit by a golf ball thrown from the gallery. You look at this incident, drunk NFL fans, NBA fans tossing debris on courts, baseball fans running on the field – the best behaved people in sports now follow the WWE.”

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

Gordie Howe passed away last Friday at the age of 88. He is known as “Mr. Hockey” and his career spanned 1946 – 1980. In his final NHL season, he was 52 years old and in that season he scored 15 goals and had 26 assists in 80 games. Gordie Howe was also a tough guy; over his career he spent a total of 2084 minutes in the penalty box. His toughness led to the creation of something that came to be known as the “Gordie Howe Hat Trick”:

A goal and an assist and a fight in the same game.

Rest in peace, Gordie Howe.

Believe it or not; I want to talk about Deflatgate once again. The thing I want to say about the matter is that Roger Goodell and the NFL ought to find a way to settle this matter in a face-saving way for everyone and they need to do that now. The reason I say they need to do that now can be summed up in two words:

Casey Martin

Recall that Casey Martin was a golfer who had a congenital problem with his leg such that while he could still play PGA quality golf, he could only do so if he rode in a cart; his legs could not take the walking of the course. Here is a summary of his dispute with the PGA:

PGA rules say no carts; players have to walk.

Martin asked for a waiver. The PGA said, “No.”

Martin sued the PGA citing the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The PGA won at the US Court of Appeals level. The PGA could have settled for that and granted a one-time exemption to Martin at that point and secured legal precedent for themselves but did not.

Martin took the case to the Supreme Court where the Justices ruled decisively – and properly in my mind – that Federal Law supersedes the rules of golf and the rules of the PGA.

The PGA not only had to allow Martin to use a cart; it also now has a significant legal precedent hanging over its head with regard to the sacred “Rules of Golf”.

The NFL is where the PGA was with a win at the US Court of Appeals level. It has legal precedent to support the idea that the NFL Commissioner can indeed discipline players in the NFL as he chooses. If that stature is nearly as important to Roger Goodell as he says it is, then the last thing he ought to do is to risk losing it.

The worst thing that might happen to Tom Brady and the Patriots is that Brady will sit out 4 NFL games at some point in his career – assuming that he does not simply retire before that suspension can take effect. The likelihood that Goodell can add to the penalty is infinitesimal so the Commish is now sitting at the peak of victory in this matter. His powers have been sanctioned by Federal Courts and he can now bask in that glory. There is nothing more for him to gain here.

And that is exactly why he ought to find a way to make this whole matter go away. Suspending Tom Brady and/or punishing the Patriots ought not be nearly as important to Roger Goodell than the affirmation of his power of discipline. So, unless this has morphed into an ego-stroking situation for him, he should be the one leading a charge to settle the matter and to move on to whatever the next issue is to face the league.

Is this going to happen? Probably not. However, it would happen in a flash if I were the Commissioner…

Now I have 2 things to say about the NBA Finals:

1. Draymond Green needs counseling. He got himself suspended from a Finals game. Ostensibly, the suspension is for a flagrant foul involving him punching LeBron James in the “man-zone”. However, that is NOT the reason he is suspended for this game. He is suspended for this game because he has accumulated a boatload of technical fouls and flagrant fouls – other times where one of his limbs found itself in contact with an opponent’s “man-zone”. The issue is one of simple self-control.

2. Cavs’ coach Ty Lue said after Game 4 that LeBron James does not “get a fair whistle” and that the officials are not giving him the calls he deserves. If true, that would be precedent-setting for the NBA; star players have gotten nothing but deference from officials going back to the days when I began to watch the NBA. Moreover, I will say as a former basketball official and a neutral observer here that if officials called Lebron James for every offensive foul he commits by pushing off, James would never make it to the second quarter of an NBA game.

If you watch NBA games on network TV, you have certainly heard Mike Breen doing the play-by-play. I like Breen’s easy going way of doing a game; he gets excited when excitement is called for but he does not dominate the program. Katie Baker wrote a very interesting biographical piece on Breen for TheRinger.com. I commend it to your reading.

Bob Molinaro had this observation in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot last week. I can find no way to dispute his point:

“TV timeout: Saw a headline this week that read, ‘NBC Sports Network to present 330 hours of Rio programming this August.’ To most people, this may look like a simple promo. To me, it’s a mental health warning.”

Finally, consider carefully this point made by Brad Rock in the Deseret News:

Last month, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake released a list of wasteful and distasteful government expenditures.

Among the revelations was a $1 million grant, part or all of which went to learning what music monkeys like. Another $1 million helped study why yawning is contagious. If you want to know whether cheerleaders are more attractive as a group, $1.1 million should help the cause. And a $3.9 million grant funded research on what makes goldfish feel sexy.

All of which pale in comparison to the Houston Rockets spending $87 million to find out whether Dwight Howard can play.

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

The NFL – demonstrating once again that the acronym might stand for the No Fun League – has a new wrinkle in the rule book for the 2016 season. The basis for the rule change goes back to a game last year when Green Bay Packers’ WR, James Jones, wore a green hoodie under his jersey and had the hood sticking out over the back of his jersey when he was on the field wearing his helmet. Jones said that the reason he did that was because it was cold and he wanted to keep warm. For the record, there is meteorological evidence that it does indeed get cold in the late Fall and early Winter in Green Bay Wisconsin.

That solution to the cold will be against the rules as of this year and the reason is simple, incontrovertible – and at the same time sort of silly. Hoodies under jerseys cannot be worn because the hood obscures – at least partially – the nameplate on the back of the player’s uniform. As I said, “simple” and “incontrovertible”. Also “silly”. Then again, it is a part of the league’s “uniform policy” meaning that “silly” is a standard feature.

Fear not. The uniform rule only applies to players. Bill Belichick will still be allowed to dress like a homeless vagrant on the sidelines so long as there is a Patriots’ logo on the hoodie he sports…

To read about some of the other rulebook tweaks the NFL has put in place for the upcoming season that have nothing to do with the rules of play, check them out here.

Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times dug up this tidbit about an athletic “dress code” and it makes the NFL policy look reasonable:

“The Iran soccer federation’s ‘morality committee’ has suspended national-team goalkeeper Sosha Makani for six months for wearing inappropriate off-field attire — specifically, loud yellow pants reminiscent of SpongeBob SquarePants.

“And you thought the NFL fashion police were tough?”

Maria Sharapova has been suspended by the tennis mavens for 2 years for using a banned substance and failing a drug test. She has claimed that she took it under doctor’s orders for a heart condition and that she had been taking it for many years on that basis. She also claimed that she was unaware that the drug had been added to the “no-no list” and therefore she continued with what was her medical regimen. Who knows if any or all of that is true?

The original recommendation was for her to serve a 4-year banishment but the tribunal that heard her appeal reduced it to a 2-year hiatus. This will be a tough thing for her to come back from; she will be 31 when her suspension ends; for most tennis players, that can be the twilight of the career.

I do not follow tennis assiduously and – as I have stated many times before – I do not read minds. Nevertheless, I wonder if some small part of the lengthy banishment here is a way for the tennis mavens to demonstrate that they are going to “be tough” on Russian athletes who test positive for PEDs/banned substances. The stories about Russian athletes doping for the Winter Games in 2014 and for other recent international competitions are myriad. Maybe this is a grandstand play on the part of International Tennis Federation?

Once again, let me turn to Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times for a summary of the Maria Sharapova situation:

“Tennis grunt queen Maria Sharapova has been suspended two years for using a banned substance.

“Here’s guessing she didn’t take the news quietly.”

With all the news of on-air talent “defecting” from ESPN – or being asked to leave – and rumors of retirements, there is one broadcasting icon at the network who is not going anywhere. Brent Musburger has signed a multi-year contract extension with ESPN and will continue to call SEC football games on the SEC Network with Jesse Palmer as the color analyst. In addition, Musburger will continue to do college basketball games after the football season is over.

Musburger turned 77 a few weeks ago and he started his broadcasting career with CBS Radio in 1968. He stayed with CBS until 1990 when a change in management there found him “expendable”; he signed on with ESPN in 1990 and has been there ever since. I have not read any reports on how long the contract extension is.

Speaking obliquely about college football, there was news recently that the Sun Belt Conference will hold a Conference Championship Game starting in 2018. If you give me a couple of weeks to think about it, I may come up with something equally inconsequential as the determination of the Sun Belt Champion. The conference itself is in a state of turmoil at the moment; let me review the bidding:

Two members (Idaho and New Mexico State) are “football-only members” and they are being kicked out of the conference at the end of the 2017 season.

Coastal Carolina – graduating from Division 1-AA to Division 1-A – will join the conference in 2018.

If you Google “Sun Belt Conference”, you find that there are no powerhouse programs there. In fact, what you will find are a lot of teams that serve as Homecoming Opponents for powerhouse programs.

I pay attention to college football but I have to admit that I had no idea who the Sun Belt Champion was last year – or the year before that. So I went and looked. My guess is that you too were not aware that:

Arkansas State has won or shared the conference title 4 times in the last 5 years.

Georgia State was the conference champion in the year that Arkansas State was not.

Finally, let me close with one more comment from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times:

“Federal agents set up a fake university — the University of Northern New Jersey — to break up a ring that sold more than 1,000 bogus non-immigrant student visas.

“The ruse was so convincing, insiders say, that eight SEC teams already had them on next season’s nonconference football schedule.”

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