The Sports Curmudgeon

I have said that the NFL was tone deaf in the way it dealt with the Ray Rice discipline matter from the time the announcement of the 2-game suspension hit the streets. I have said that the prosecutor(s) in Atlantic City, NJ should be ashamed of themselves for their leniency in that case. I said that the folks in NFL Security were either incompetent or complicit in a cover-up in this whole matter. I have chided Ravens’ fans who gave Ray Rice a standing ovation when he hit the field at training camp. I pointed out the apparent – if not real – conflict of interest in naming Robert Mueller to head the investigation into what the Hell happened here. I have a whole list of folks with whom I am angry here but I have to go waaay down on that list before I come to Roger Goodell.

He has been ham-handed, tone-deaf, out to sea and befuddled throughout this mess. However, he has also become the guy whose face is on the dartboard for everyone to take shots at. And I do not think that is either fair or appropriate. Too much anger is misplaced.

Before you accuse me of being a shill for Roger Goodell, please consider:

Roger Goodell did not hit Janay Parker Rice in that elevator. For all of the activists out there who are carrying signs demanding that Goodell lose his job, why are you mad at him? He got the initial punishment wrong; he admitted that he got it wrong; he then upped the ante. What would you have had him do? His mistake was the original 2-game suspension decision and it has been corrected to a degree. If you want him fired for that, no one would be safe in a management position anywhere in the US; managers and leaders make mistakes all the time. The key element is whether or not they correct their errors and find ways not to repeat them.

Roger Goodell did not give Ray Rice a pass on criminal charges putting him into a “court-supervised counseling” program. The original charges offered up by the grand jury could have gotten him 3-5 years in jail plus a fine of $10K. Pleading that down to “counseling” seems to me to shrug at the seriousness of what happened in that elevator on that evening. If you believe that violence against women is too commonplace in US society – which I do – and if you have any belief that punishment has any effect at all – which I do -, then you should be mad at the prosecutors in Atlantic City a lot more than Roger Goodell.

I do not say any of the above with the intention of exonerating Roger Goodell; he handled this matter about as poorly as possible but I do not think his fumbling the ball here comes close to a “firing offense”. Based on what I know now – and presumably there will be more info coming from the “Mueller Investigation” – I have an opinion on who ought to lose his/her job:

Everyone in NFL Security who was involved in the league’s investigation of this matter leading up to the decision to issue that original 2-game suspension should be in “employment jeopardy”.

Far too little information that was “out there to be had” never found its way to NFL Security. Boiled down to a single word, that performance was “Incompetent”.

Alternatively, more information than has been acknowledged did come into the hands of NFL Security but it never made its way to decision makers. Boiled down to two words, that performance was a “cover up”.

Where I come from, both “incompetence” and “covering up” are causes for termination.

The “middle management structure” within the NFL that oversees NFL Security and its performance and its role in keeping senior leadership apprised of the facts of matters of this kind also should be in “employment jeopardy”.

If the problem was “incompetence”, it is unlikely that said incompetence came forth in full bloom for the first time in this matter. Yes, people make mistakes but if you are a professional in the security/investigation game, these mistakes were way below the level of “junior varsity”. How was that kind of performance allowed to continue to exist? Middle managers should be made to “splain that.” [/Ricky Ricardo]

If the problem was a cover-up, middle managers could have played a variety of roles:

Middle managers actually buried germane information and kept it from senior decision makers.

NFL Security folks did the covering up and the middle managers did not ask enough questions to prevent those folks from being successful in the cover up.

Again, the choices here seem to be “incompetence” or “covering up” and I think I said above what I think of those situations.

One other actor in this affair is the NFLPA which is now filing an appeal on behalf of Ray Rice based on technicalities in the process here. They are going to argue in favor of a man who unquestionably cold-cocked his fiancée in an elevator to the point where she was unconscious as a result of a single blow. They are going to use “procedural niceties” to seek his reinstatement as an NFL player. Boiled down to a single word, that action is “disgusting”.

I would ask DeMaruice Smith the following question. Suppose someone in the NFLPA office who answers to you unequivocally did what Ray Rice did in that elevator – or what Adrian Peterson allegedly did to his 4-year-old son – and that person made your organization look like a bunch of troglodytes. Then, if you terminated his employment with the NFLPA for any of variety of reasons, how would you react to someone outside your organization appealing his termination based on ‘procedures”?

People like Roger Goodell and DeMaruice Smith – and politicians too – never deal with those kinds of questions. They hide behind the arm-waving statement that hypothetical questions are somehow inappropriate. Well, in this case, absent the kind of answers needed from the NFLPA, I can only draw conclusions based on actions:

Procedural matters are far more important than violence against women. Those procedures need more vigorous protection than do victims.

I am part of a book club; we had a meeting earlier this week. At that meeting, I had the opportunity to tell one of my book club colleagues – who also reads these rants once in a while – that I would be happy to resolve this matter for the NFL in the following way.

I would be happy to put these rants on hiatus for however long in order to undertake to lead the investigation into what happened for the NFL. I have no conflict of interest in the matter nor do I have any apparent conflict of interest.
I would do the investigation for no fee; the only charges would be to cover documented out-of-pocket costs.

The only “wrinkle” I would add to the mix here is this:

No one other than me and whomever I might solicit to join me in doing the investigation would see a single word of the final report until it was ready for release.

Moreover, the release of the final report would happen electronically to the NFL, the NFLPA and 50 press outlets simultaneously. There would be no redactions and it would not be copyrighted.

So, when it comes to pass that there is criticism of the Mueller Investigation – for valid or for invalid reasons – I am on record here providing them a way out of the mess. The caveat is that I spent 37 years of my life as a basketball referee and what I learned from that avocation was to “blow the whistle and call what I see.” This whole mess needs a lot more of that and a lot less misplaced anger.

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

Recent events endanger my status as “the sports curmudgeon”; I can foresee lots of perfectly normal folks adopting that attitude if things keep breaking as they have. How can one be merely a fan – or even just an open-minded observer – of the sports world given the bizarre events of the last week or so? Consider…

The NFL made such a mess of their disciplinary action in the Ray Rice case that normally logical and rational voices in the national media have called for Roger Goodell to step down. Keith Olbermann – never to be part of any middle-of-the-road thinking – said that Goodell should be fired because Goodell had forfeited his privilege of resigning. Five months ago – before Ray and Janay Rice stepped into that elevator in Atlantic City – few if any folks thought that Roger Goodell was a liability to the league.

In an attempt to find a somewhat protected harbor in the maelstrom, the NFL announced that an independent investigator would find the underlying cause of all this and that the investigator would be the former FBI Director, Robert Mueller. For those who may have forgotten, Mueller’s stepping into the middle of the NFL mess should be child’s play for him. This man took over the job as FBI Director seven days before the attack on the World Trade towers in NYC orchestrated by Osama bin Laden. He served under President Bush and under President Obama indicating to me that he had to have been very competent in his position to merit the trust of two men who probably agree on very little. Now, if that were the end of the story, it would seem as if the ship of the NFL had made it to port and the storm had cleared. Except…

For those who have worked in government positions, the following concept is almost mundane. One must avoid any “conflict of interest” and, simultaneously, one must also avoid any “appearance of a conflict of interest” even in circumstances where an actual conflict does not exist. Why is that an issue here?

Robert Muller is a partner in a law firm. That firm represented the NFL in its recent negotiations with Direct TV – provider of the NFL Season Ticket. That contract brought a nice chunk of change to the NFL and also provided the law firm with substantial fees. Conflict of interest? Probably not. Appearance of a conflict of interest…

That same law firm represents one of the team executives for the Baltimore Ravens. Anyone who follows the NFL for more than an hour a month ought to recognize the connection between the Ravens and the NFL and Ray Rice. Conflict of interest? Probably not. Appearance of a conflict of interest…

I am more than willing to ignore the cries of “conflict of interest” that are out there until some of the “criers” produce evidence comparable to the evidence we saw in the infamous elevator incident indicating a real conflict of interest. I have three reservations about the investigation before it begins that have nothing to do with conflict of interest or with the competence of the folks who do the investigation. These three concerns are endemic to these kinds of independent investigations; that does not mean the investigations cannot uncover truth; it means the investigations have to be subject to critical reading and critical thinking. The final report here is not likely to be accurately summed up in a simple sound bite.

Concern #1: The investigators do not have subpoena power. They cannot demand evidence and have it delivered under the auspices of a court order. The NFL says they will have access to “everything”. In fact, they will have access to what NFL employees give them and to what they have enough insight to ask for.

Concern #2: None of the folks to whom the investigators speak will be under oath.

Concern #3: None of the folks to whom the investigators speak will undergo a cross-examination. If anyone on the “interview list” has an axe to grind, that person might slant his/her interviews to hone that axe edge. Without hearing responses of a thoughtful and prepared cross-examination, the possibility exists for less than full evidence in the hands of the investigators.

Lest you think Concern #3 is a trivial matter, consider the role of cross-examination in a trial. Hell, without cross-examination, Perry Mason would never have won a case…

My concerns are out there for folks to examine. When the final investigative report is out, I will read it in the original form – to the extent that it is released to the public – and draw my conclusions there. I would suggest everyone else do the same.

In a related matter, there have been several members of the US Congress who had expressed their concerns about the NFL’s behavior in this matter and have called upon the NFL for transparency in this investigation and in future matters of discipline. When the US Congress calls for “transparency” in anything, that represents the ultimate level of chutzpah in the known universe. Please note that when the US Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act back in the 1970s, it specifically exempted the Congress from each and every provision of that act.

The Congress wants transparency from the NFL? Pot, meet the kettle…

NFL owners have expressed their support for Roger Goodell, as I would have expected. However, Danny Boy Snyder announced that he and the Redskins’ organization “strongly endorse” Roger Goodell as the NFL Commish. I can only imagine this thought-bubble over Goodell’s head when he read about that:

“At least Jeffrey Dahmer is not around to ‘strongly endorse’ me…”

On top of that mess, the NFL had to deal with Adrian Peterson’s indictment in a case that involves alleged child abuse in the way he disciplined his son. Pictures allegedly of Peterson’s son bearing disturbing bruises/welts appeared on the Internet. Obviously, this matter is not yet resolved; but for the moment, I cannot see how it might end in a positive place for Adrian Peterson, the Minnesota Vikings and/or the NFL.

The NBA has its own discombobulation going. After the owner of the Atlanta Hawks complained that too many Black fans and too much hip-hop “atmosphere” kept White fans away from Hawks’ games. After admitting he said that, he said that he would sell the team. Despite the eccentricity of that comment, this has been my reaction to this matter since the story broke:

1. This guy is really a junior varsity version of Donald Sterling when it comes to saying improper stuff.

2. He seems a bit too eager to sell the team if that statement is what pushed him over the top.

After that matter had percolated/festered for a week or so, we learned that Hawks’ GM, Danny Ferry, made some equally eccentric remarks about Luol Deng in a conference call that was recorded. More than a few folks label those remarks as “racist”. Absent context, they do indeed sound racist – but in fact the full context is absent at this moment. Here is something that does not fit well in this picture:

Danny Ferry played in the NBA for more than a decade with and against rosters that were predominantly Black. For that entire career, no one noticed that he was a “racist”?

Danny Ferry has held front office/management positions with at least two teams in the NBA for more than a decade. In all of that time, no one noticed that he was a “racist”?

In light of all of the above, is there any “good news” out there? Believe it or not, the good news comes from the NCAA and good news from the NCAA is about as rare as the following statement:

I am going to play hooky from school so I can watch a WNBA game.

The NCAA quietly in the midst of all these adrenaline producing stories lifted the bowl ban on Penn State and gave the school back its football scholarships a couple of years early. In making that move at this time, the NCAA avoided lots of questioning about the basis for its original sanctions. I argued at the time and continue to believe that the horrific events of child molestation that happened at Penn State had nothing whatsoever to do with NCAA rules and that the NCAA had no reason to do anything other than deplore what happened. However, that is water over the bridge and the football program of today is not suffering based on the actions of someone not associated with the program for about 15 years.

In addition, the NCAA also rid itself of an ongoing legal action; given their recent batterings in legal system, that was probably a smart move. Recall that the NCAA “fined” Penn State $60M and that the NCAA was going to target that money to child abuse prevention programs. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sued the NCAA over that fine and won a preliminary round in the matter. As an add-on to lifting Penn State’s bowl ban, the NCAA also told the Commonwealth that it would give the $60M back to Pennsylvania for them to oversee.

Hey, at least something seems to be going right out there in the sports world…

Finally, perhaps these words attributed to Vince Lombardi have a particular value and meaning for the folks mentioned above:

“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get back up.”

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

After spending yesterday talking about baseball, my mind focused on the playoffs and the new “play-in game” feature of the MLB playoffs.  To say that this novelty has created some controversy would be a huge understatement, so I thought that I would get in my two cents in favor of that added wild-card team.  However, thinking about the expanded playoffs led me to a larger point that I want to make today;

• Bud Selig is – on balance – an excellent Commissioner of Baseball.

It is fashionable to mock Bud Selig and to characterize him as a bumbling old guy who would take forever to figure out that it is raining outside.  Lord knows; there are plenty of nationally recognized sports columnists who do that at least once a month.  I choose to take a contrarian view.

In the first place, the most appropriate way to judge a person in the role of Commissioner of Baseball is to compare his accomplishments and his failures with those of his predecessors.  It is irrelevant that that one might consider Bill Gates a more effective CEO at Microsoft than one might consider Bud Selig an effective Commissioner of Baseball.  The jobs are only the same in a “theory of management” sort of way.  A comparison of that ilk is the same as comparing the President of Harvard University with the Chairman of the International Olympic Committee.  Once you get beyond the fact that each gentleman is the “guy in charge”, the similarities fade quickly.

So let me tell you how I rank Bud Selig as compared to his predecessors in the same job:

1. Bart Giamatti/Faye Vincent:  I lump these two folks together because Giamatti was not in the job very long and Vincent spent his tenure continuing down the same path(s) that Giamatti trod.  The shining moment of that tenure was the “Pete Rose banishment”.  The downside was the absolute lack of any progress toward labor peace with the MLB Players Union setting the stage for the 1994 World Series cancellation.
2. Peter Uberroth:  No matter what his accomplishments might have been during his time in office – and there were not a myriad of accomplishments –, there is one word that demeans his reputation in that job.  That word is “collusion”…
3. Bowie Kuhn:  For 15 years, he was routinely mocked as an ineffective leader much the way Bud Selig is today.  During his time, there were multiple labor strikes and he set a silliness standard for the game by demanding that Jim Bouton take back all the things he said about baseball in Ball Four because he as The Commish deemed the book to be “detrimental to baseball”.  Really…
4. William Eckert:  General Eckert made his career in the US Air Force.  Supposedly, when he took the job as Commissioner, he had not even seen a baseball game for the past decade or so.  His tenure was not marked with great leaps forward…
5. Ford Frick:  The thing from his administration that has lasted the longest was that Frick was the guy who decided to put an asterisk on Roger Maris’ home run record in 1961.
6. Happy Chandler:  As commissioner in the late 1940s, Chandler was a positive force in helping Branch Rickey integrate baseball in 1947 and he was the motive force in establishing the players’ pension fund back then.
7. Kennesaw Mountain Landis:  A man highly mythologized by the baseball poets for “saving baseball” after the Black Sox scandal.  What he did was to use his personal judgments to decide who would and would not be banned from baseball.  Even players acquitted in court of wrongdoing were banned by Landis.  However, when push came to shove, Landis allowed star players Tris Speaker and Ty Cobb to remain in baseball’s good graces after it became clear that both of them had bet on a fixed baseball game.  Moreover – and make no mistake about this – Landis perpetuated the color barrier for MLB; Landis blocked the ability of Black players to participate in MLB.  Rather than saying he “saved baseball”, I prefer to think that baseball “survived Landis”.
   

            Now consider the successes in the Bud Selig years:

1. In 1994, the players walked out in the middle of the season (August); that is why there was no World Series in 1994.  Bud Selig canceled the World Series because the players did not finish the season and there were no teams available to stage playoffs and the World Series.
2. If anyone wants to argue that the teams could have used “replacement players”, then that person would have to take exception with another great sporting myth that now Supreme Court Justice, Sonya Sotamayor, also “saved baseball” with her ruling that barred teams from using replacement players starting in Spring Training in 1995.  The fact is that “replacement players” was never the answer to the labor problems in baseball in the 1990s.
3. Since that time, there have been no strikes/lockouts/work stoppages/whatever in MLB.  When the current CBA expires in 2016, MLB will have had 21 consecutive years of labor peace.
4. In Bud Selig’s regime, baseball has flourished economically and expanded.  In 1992, baseball revenue was reportedly $1.6B; in 2011, revenue topped $7.2B.  That is a 450% increase in 20 years.  It is certainly not all of Bud Selig’s doing, but he must be doing something right…
5. In 2011, nine teams drew 3 million fans or more and only one team drew less than 1.5 million fans.
6. The wild card team in the playoffs came into being.
7. Revenue sharing among teams increased – – it is not where revenue sharing has gone in the NFL, but it is better than it was in 1992 when Bud Selig took the job.
8. Interleague play began – and was mightily successful and well received by fans.
9. The World Baseball Classic is the single largest international baseball event in the world; twenty-eight countries now participate.  Assuming that next year’s tournament goes off as planned, it will be the third of its kind. Spain and Canada have already qualified.  Bud Selig made that happen.
10. Drug testing regimes expanded.  Recall that it was Bud Selig who first began the call for steroid testing in baseball and that progress along that line was blocked by Donald Fehr of the MLB Players’ Union on the basis that drug testing was an invasion of the players’ privacy.  It took a direct threat from the US Congress and a public tongue-lashing by Congressthings to get Fehr to begin to agree that testing regimes for PEDs would be permissible.  [Aside:  At the time of that controversy, it was a crime to possess let alone use certain of those steroid drugs without a prescription.  Fehr was “defending” lawbreaking by asserting a privacy right.]
11. Even the idea of the All-Star Game determining the home field advantage for the World Series is not nearly as bad as the Bud-Bashers would make it out to be.  Prior to his edict that the team representing the league that won the All-Star Game would have home field advantage in the World Series, that same determination was made in an arbitrary way.  Since the inception of the World Series, the rules for home field advantage had the two leagues take turns with the advantage.  Just because that rule was put in place in 1905 does not make it sacrosanct; in fact, it often allowed a team with an inferior record in one league to hold that advantage over a team with a better record in the other league simply because of the calendar.  Let me be clear; there is no logical thread that connects the winner of the All-Star Game to the home field advantage in the World Series just as there is no logical thread that connects the calendar to that home field advantage.  I would argue that Bud Selig’s criterion is infinitesimally better than the previous criterion because it has something to do with baseball instead of the calendar.

Now, if you are tempted to demean Bud Selig because he does not “measure up” to commissioners in other sports, I would urge you to take a deep breath and think about your position there:

• David Stern:  I think David Stern is a man trying to hold together a league that can only survive with its superstar players.  If those players ever realized their power in the game, David Stern’s authority would not extend beyond his office suite.  Moreover, that situation is of David Stern’s making; he created the situation where the NBA markets its players instead of its teams.  Remember, David Stern himself said during the last lockout that 23 of the NBA’s 30 teams are losing money; that is not much of a recommendation for his leadership.
• Roger Goodell:  He has done plenty of good things for the NFL and avoiding a player/management impasse last season was critically important.  However, his handling of “Bountygate” has been ham-handed and the use of replacement referees in the 2012 NFL regular season is a stain on his record that will take at least a decade to fade.
• Gary Bettman:  You cannot be serious…  [/John McEnroe]

Even if you want to go to the “minor sports” in the US to look for someone light-years more effective and successful than Bud Selig, you will have a difficult time.  Would you like to make a case for the greatness of Tim Finchem of the PGA and all of the sponsors and corporate partners that the PGA Tour has lost?  How about the France Family that runs NASCAR?  Do you believe that more than 5% of US sports fans could even name the guy who heads up ATP – let alone assess his effectiveness in that position?  I don’t.

The closest I can come to naming a commissioner on the US sporting scene who has been as effective as Bud Selig has would be MLS Commissioner, Don Garber.  In his dozen years at the helm of MLS, the league has expanded – after Garber contracted a couple of teams early in his tenure that were just not viable; MLS no longer has one owner holding half the teams in the league; many teams play in newly constructed “soccer-only venues”; there have been national TV deals with ESPN, FOX and now NBC for MLS games.  That résumé is comparable to Bud Selig’s and there is another similarity.  Both Bud Selig and Don Garber do their work behind the scenes and without a lot of publicity and panache.

Baseball is better off today than it was when Fay Vincent went noisily into the night as he was relieved of his job as Commissioner in 1992.  If you want to argue that it would have been better off no matter who had replaced Fay Vincent, I would be tempted to agree with you but even in that circumstance you have to credit Bud Selig for following the first tenet of the Hippocratic oath:

• He did no harm.

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

 

 

Sportswriters and commentators like to say that sports are a microcosm of life and that they teach us some of the essential lessons of life. Such statements are usually self-serving. However, I do believe that the current hootdoodle created by Rashard Mendenhall’s tweets on the subject of Osama bin Laden’s death might be instructive about one of the foundation pieces of American society.

Let me do a quick reset here in case anyone has not heard about “The Mendenhall Tweets”. After President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed in an exchange of fire with US military forces, much of the country erupted with shows of patriotism and flag-waving. Rashard Mendenhall took to Twitter to say:

“What kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side.”

Subsequently, with regard to Osama bin Laden’s involvement with the incidents of 9/11/2001 and the destruction of the NY Trade Center, Mendenhall expanded on his thinking by posting on Twitter the following:

“We’ll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style.”

These expressions can serve as an example of what it means to value freedom of speech in the US and what burdens said freedom of speech bring to bear on speakers.

Before I go off on a rant of my own here, let me state again that I am not an attorney nor have I spent a day of my life in law school. My opinions are not steeped in any scholarly consideration of the law; my opinions are simply those of an educated person who has accompanied the earth on 67 journeys around the sun.

There is no “First Amendment” issue here. The First Amendment only prohibits the Congress – – and other legislative bodies – – from enacting laws that would inhibit free speech. Even though I hold the Congress of the United States in as low a regard as I can, I have not been able to determine even a single Congressthing who has suggested that Rashard Mendenhall’s tweets should be banned or should subject him to punishment by law. Therefore, please ignore any discussion of the First Amendment and as it might relate to what Mendenhall said or meant; it truly would be irrelevant.

Outside of the legal context, however, the existence and the defense of the First Amendment place some burdens on Rashard Mendenhall when he chooses to speak out – – or in this case “tweet out”. He can tweet whatever he wants to tweet; in fact, the more offensive and outrageous the content of his tweets, the more important it is for people who appreciate “freedom of speech” to defend his right to tweet as he wants. The burdens borne by Rashard Mendenhall are societal and not legal.

He has the right to say what he did. I have an equal right to say he is uninformed, out to lunch, off the reservation and downright whacko. When he exercises his “right to tweet”, he is encumbered by the reactions that will come to him as a result of his tweets. I am sure he does not give a fig about my opinions; he might care a whole lot more if certain other people decide to take personal actions – – not legal actions – – that could be inimical to his interests because of his tweets. For example:

He is an employee of the Pittsburgh Steelers – – owned by the Rooney family. The eldest living Rooney is a member of the US Diplomatic Corps at the moment serving as US Ambassador to Ireland. If he or his scions decide that they no longer want Rashard Mendenhall in their employ based on his tweets, they can exercise their Freedom of Association and decide not to associate with him. He has a right to free speech; he does not have a right to play for the Pittsburgh Steelers – – or any other NFL team.

He is an athlete whose agent(s) are always on the lookout for advantageous endorsement deals. If the decision makers at various corporations decide that they do not want their companies aligned with someone who would tweet such twaddle, they can take their endorsement searches in different directions.

He is a public figure. His tweets attract far more attention than any of my tweets would – – if I ever decided to tweet. Because his tweets attract more attention, he bears the burden of being called a meathead by LOTS of folks for any of his expressed views that might be a bit outré.

I have no idea if the Pittsburgh Steelers will seek to have him ply his trade elsewhere. The fact that Mendenhall is a recidivist when it comes to stupid tweets – – he also said that Adrian Peterson’s comments on NFL players being modern day slaves was on target and expounded to say that the business practices of the NFL and the slave trade 200 years ago were directly comparable – – might factor into a Steelers’ decision to find a new running back.

I will be shocked beyond belief if his agent can land him a new endorsement deal with any business entity in the near future. I never studied marketing either, but it just seems logical to me that most businesses do not want to associate themselves with people who call legitimate business entities part of a modern day slave trade or people who think that Osama bin Laden never got to “state his side of the case” with regard to the happenings on 9/11/2001.

[Aside: Does Rashard Mendenhall know that Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa in his name about 20 years ago that advocated and sanctioned the killing of Jews and Americans? If so, might that not be an opportunity that he took to “state his side of the case”?]

With regard to public scorn, Mendenhall will be a catcher and not a pitcher for a long time to come. To be sure, there are folks out there whose firm beliefs will make Rashard Mendenhall’s seem to be “measured” and “worthy of discussion”. Make no mistake; there are conspiracy theorists who are going to take this incident in directions that have not been charted so far. After all, Osama bin Laden’s body was buried at sea so there will never be any corpus dilicti.

Someone will surely point out that since there is no body, there is no way to prove that the person of Osama bin Laden is dead since no one had been able to produce his body for the last ten years. What is different now – – other than the “convenient story” that he was killed and buried at sea? We lived through the “birthers”; be prepared for the rise of the “deathers”.

I am sure that someone somewhere will “conclude” that bin Laden’s death really happened a year or so ago and that his body has been “kept on ice” for a while until this propitious moment politically for the Administration to declare that he was killed in a daring raid in a foreign country. Maybe they “kept him on ice” in the same place that they have kept the bodies of the aliens that landed at Roswell, NM in the 1940s…?

I mention all this because the fact that other people will certainly come up with even more outrageous positions that did Rashard Mendenhall, that does not excuse his ignorance. In fact, just because his tweets will be filed mentally alongside the commentaries of folks who dined at the “All You Can Eat Stupidity Buffet”, that makes his commentary and world view even more repugnant. Moreover, because it is repugnant, we must protect vigorously his freedom to express his repugnant ignorance.

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

It is fashionable to take potshots at ESPN – – the self-proclaimed “World Wide Leader in Sports” – – when they do excessive self-promotion or when their on air personalities take things over the top. When ESPN “gets one right”, they usually do not get kudos. Allow me to offer kudos to whomever at ESPN that decided to get British commentators for the World Cup matches.

These announcers did not chatter and talk over the game; they did not talk down to their audience when they explained a rule or why a player tried to do what he tried to do; they did not “dumb it down”. All these folks did was to provide entertaining commentary around their explanation of the action within the game. Would that we could infuse all of those stylistic traits into certain US sportscasters…

Three of the commentators that I particularly enjoyed were:

Derek Rae
Ally McCoist
Martin Tyler

My favorite of all the commentators was:

Ian Darke

I enjoy listening to and reading the words of people who can use language to create a picture in my mind. I also appreciate the ability of commentators on sporting events to find new and different ways to create those pictures. John Madden has his place with his exclamations of “Boom!” and the like; I assert there is another school of sports commentary out there that is equally if not more enjoyable. I think the four gentlemen named above demonstrated that such a school of broadcast journalism is alive and well in the United Kingdom.

I first realized that these guys were “different” when the camera focused on the Spanish coach, Vincente del Bosque, sitting passively on his bench looking at the action in front of him. The commentator described del Bosque as “lugubrious”. I promise you that you will not hear that word on SportsCenter twice in a decade. But Google yourself an image of del Bosque and look at it and ask yourself if “lugubrious” is not an excellent adjective here.

So, I started listening for interesting and different turns of phrase and started keeping a list…

About 40 minutes into one of Spain’s early games, the announcer said:

“Spain, so far, is strangely subdued.”

Forget the alliterative value here. In the US, we would probably have been treated to some nonsensical comment that required mind-reading skills on the part of the commentator to the effect that “Spain was content to play within themselves…” Feh!

These British commentators pulled no punches with many of their comments. Regarding a foul by the Ghanaian team, they said:

“No need for that. Very ridiculous.”

After the goalkeeper for Argentina had a ball hit the post and bounce out, they said matter-of-factly:

He is “the luckiest goalkeeper on Earth.”

[Do not hold your breath waiting until the next time you hear anything like that on the telecast of an ESPN football or basketball game…]

When the Mexican team was hosed by the referee missing an offside call by about 6 feet leading to a goal against the Mexican team, the call was direct and pointed:

“Mexico is right to be indignant. A huge injustice…”

Describing Diego Maradona and his behavior on the sidelines – – as opposed to those of Spain’s Vincente del Bosque – – one of the commentators noted that Maradona

“…is not one of the great shy introverts of football.”

When the camera lingered on a team’s substitute players watching the action from the bench, we heard:

“They also serve who only sit and watch.”

When a player made a nice pass to a teammate who had open field to run in, the description was not over the top. They merely said – with a hint of excitement in the voice:

“That was a very tidy ball…”

When players’ attempts at a score were way off target or trivially stopped by the goalkeeper, here were some of the descriptive phrases:

“That was a crazily optimistic try…”

And…

“Frankly, a defender’s attempt [to score]…

When a recognized player had not done much in a particular game, they simply acknowledged that fact without trying to go all Sigmund Freud on the audience:

[He] “has not fully expressed himself in this match.”

A team down by a goal with ten minutes to play was

“… forced into urgent action.”

When a team was down two goals with about ten minutes left to play, the description was:

“The nails are in the coffin.”

As time was running out on Slovakia’s last game in the tournament, the commentary was direct and expressive:

“The last flickering flame of Slovak ambition has been extinguished.”

Paraguay advanced to the quarterfinals having scored only three goals in the tournament. Instead of saying that they “rode their defense” to that status or something like that, the description of the Paraguayan defense was:

“…a miserly, obdurate defense.”

When teams continued to try the same kind of offensive attack that had produced nothing for the entire game, these announcers told us that

“They just keep running down a cul-de-sac…”

Moreover, when a game was tied with only a few minutes left to play and both teams were looking to get one more good scoring chance, the description was:

“And this one [the game] is on the knife’s edge now…”

I do not mean to pick on John Harkes as the US person involved in these ESPN commentaries, but let me use one of his contributions as a contrast here. When the US played Ghana in the elimination round, Harkes said of Clint Dempsey:

“He knows what it feels like to score against this team.”

The reference here is to Dempsey’s goal against the Ghanaian team in the 2006 World Cup game between the US and Ghana. The irrelevance of that fact to the game between those National Teams in the 2010 World Cup tournament is stark. Please note that Harkes did not offer this analytical gem after Ghana beat the US in 2010 as it did in 2006:

“Many of the US players knew coming in what it felt like to lose to the Ghanaian team.”

If you know what it feels like to score against a team you last played 4 years ago, why would one not know what it feels like to lose to that same team? The British play-by-play guy working with Harkes on that day had the grace not to point out the silliness of that kind of commentary.

Over and above all of these entertaining turns of phrases, the British announcers contributed to my enjoyment of the matches with what they did not do. They did not go into long stories about the hardships that players and their families had to overcome in order for the players to make their National Teams and for those National Teams to make it to the World Cup tournament. The only “up close and personal” feelgood moment I can recall came with a single mention of Uruguay’s Diego Forlan committing himself to soccer with the objective of earning enough money playing the game to pay for all of his sister’s medical bills after she was paralyzed in a car accident when he was 12 years old. That mention lasted no more than 20 seconds – – probably no more than 10 seconds but I am leaving myself some wiggle room here lest someone take the time to find that moment on YouTube and time it out at 12 seconds.

Imagine if an American announcing crew had several days to prepare for that tidbit. Instead of a single 20-second mention, there would have been multiple references to this fact tied to every time Forlan had a chance to score. Surely, at halftime, there would have been a 3 to 5 minute feature on Forlan’s sister and the hardships of her life and those molded the character of the young Diego. It would have been a lengthy interruption of the game to tell a story that was summed up succinctly and completely by our British announcers.

Good show, gentlemen. Thank you for good works.

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