The Sports Curmudgeon

The overall label for sports news over the weekend would have to be “subsidence” or “collapse” or maybe even “disintegration”.  Two major stories of that sort dominated the sports landscape and the one that was noted globally was the loss by the US Women’s National Team (USWNT) in the Women’s World Cup in the Round of 16.  That is the earliest elimination for a USWNT since 1991 when FIFA initiated a women’s tournament.  In the eight previous tournaments, the US women finished third or better every time.  The hype going into this tournament was that there could be a “three-peat” for the women and that had never been done before.

Last week, I said that the women had made it to the Knockout Round but had not looked anything like impressive in their Group Stage games.  The team played better against Sweden but never put the ball in the net – the same thing that plagued them in Group Stage games.  Consider:

• This USWNT – – seeking a “three-peat” don’t you know – – scored a total of 4 goals in 4 games and 3 of them came against the team from Vietnam, a team that really did not belong in the tournament in the first place.
• The USWNT closed out its 4-game appearance in this year’s Women’s World Cup on a goal drought that lasted for 238 minutes.

The USWNT roster will change dramatically soon; ten players on the roster are 30 years old or older.  Megan Rapinoe has already announced her retirement from professional soccer and while some of the other veteran players may choose to continue competing, they are not likely to be around much past the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris – – if they make it to that competition.  And, of course, there will be those who pin the blame for this underachievement on the coach, Vlatko Andonovski, ignoring the patently obvious fact that he never appeared on the pitch for even a moment in the tournament.

What happened to cause this seeming catastrophe?  I have no interest in trying to read the minds of the players and I will not try to do a mass psychological assessment of the team from afar and without the requisite knowledge even to attempt such an undertaking.  I think the root cause of the relatively early ouster for this year’s USWNT is this:

• The world has caught up to the US.  In previous World Cup tournaments, the USWNT won the cup 4 times and medaled in every tournament based on having a greater number of elite athletes on the squad.  Looking at their games this year against Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden, the US women are no longer clearly better athletes because those teams have gotten better.

In no way should anyone take that assessment as a negative statement about the USWNT; rather, it is a compliment for women’s soccer programs and progress around the world.  The USWNT set a high standard for performance in women’s soccer and plenty of other countries have chosen to take on the challenge of meeting that standard.  Next year’s Olympic competition should be very interesting viewing.

[Aside:  The USWNT has won a medal in every Women’s World Cup Tournament and in every Olympics save for the 2016 Olympics and this year’s Women’s World Cup.  In both of those events, they were eliminated by Sweden on penalty kicks.  Cue Rod Serling …]

This situation – – where the world catches up to a standard set by the US – – should not be a total surprise to sports fans.  For years, the US dominated men’s basketball so thoroughly that the US sent teams of collegians to play against much older competition and won just about all the time.  By the late 80’s the rest of the world had progressed to the point where its adults were better than our college players and that led to the US putting the “Dream Team” out on display.  The Dream Team showed that the world still had a way to go to match up against the best pro players, but the fact of world improvement was clear to anyone who watched the competitions.

Look today at the state of men’s basketball here in the US.  In our NBA, I would argue that 4 of the top players in the NBA today are “foreigners” who learned to play and honed their skills outside the US:

1. Giannis Antetokounmpo
2. Luka Doncic
3. Joel Embid
4. Nikola Jokic

If Victor Wembanyama lives up to 80% of his hype, he will join that list of 4 dominant foreign basketball players.  The world does not produce the same quantity of top basketball players as does the US in 2023, but we should recognize that the best players from “over there” have the talent and the ability to compete and to excel in the modern NBA.  The world caught up to the US in men’s basketball and I believe that has also happened in women’s soccer.

So, what’s next for the USWNT?  As I said above, the coach will take some heat for this “embarrassment”.  With the Olympic competition less than a year in the future, it might be difficult for a new coach to take over a team that will likely have significant roster changes.  Coach Andonovski is on a hot seat to be sure.

As noted above, the current roster is dominated by veteran players.  The overseers of US women’s soccer need to be sure that there is a pipeline of similar talent coming up through the levels of US women’s soccer to replace retirees.  Maybe player development for future USWNT squads will need to include sending some youngsters to Europe where women’s soccer is a year-round undertaking.  Practice makes perfect …

The way the USWNT has dominated the sport in the past has been by scoring lots of goals with an attacking and finishing style of play.  This year’s team attacked but rarely finished.  I will not pretend to have figured out the key that will unlock that “finishing potential” for the women in next year’s Olympics – – but someone who knows more about soccer strategy and tactics than I do had better figure that out quickly.

I said at the start that there were two stories from the weekend about “collapse”.  The other one involves the disintegration of the PAC-12 into the PAC-4.  That will be the lead topic in tomorrow’s rant.

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

 

 

There were far too many trades at the MLB deadline to tally all of them here with a smidgen of commentary on many of them.  Rather, let me mention a few of the player movements that I think will be most impactful:

• Justin Verlander back to the Astros:  The Astros need pitching help; they are only a half game behind the Rangers in the AL West as of this morning despite injuries galore to their starting rotation.  Verlander is big-time help there …
• The Rangers added pitching too:  Speaking of the Rangers, they strengthened their staff too with the addition of Max Scherzer and Aroldis Chapman.
• The Angels keep Otani and add pitching:  The Angels resisted the temptation to trade a superstar for a ton of prospects and make a run for it in 2023.  They are only 3 games out of a wild card slot as of today.  They did add another starter to the rotation in Lucas Giolito, which should help a bit.
• Tommy Pham to the D-Backs:  He adds a career OPS of .790 to the D-Backs’ outfield.  He is also the “other guy” the Mets cleared out of Queens this year.
• Michael Lorenzen to the Phillies:  Lorenzen was an All-Star about three weeks ago and is having the best year of his career.  The Phillies’ starting rotation is strong.
• Jeimer Candelario to the Cubs:  His OPS this year is .823 which is .084 higher than his career average and he is not an embarrassment in the field.  The Cubs’ lineup got better.

I think the AL West race will be the most interesting one to watch this year.  The Rangers and Astros are neck-and-neck.  They each got an aging starting pitcher from the Mets at the trade deadline; the Astros have hung in there while Yordan Alvarez and Jose Altuve were on the IL, and both are back now.  My advice for baseball fans is to keep a close eye on that race even if your favorite team is not involved in the race in any way.

Moving on …  The US Women’s National Team made it out of the Group Stage and into the Knockout Round of the Women’s World Cup tournament – – but by the skin of their teeth.  I missed about 15 minutes of the game against the Netherlands but watched the rest of the US team’s games, and they have looked anything but dominant except against Vietnam.  Put that game in perspective; if FIFA had not expanded the field for the tournament this year, Vietnam may never have made it to New Zealand for the competition.

Against the Netherlands, the US women managed to get a draw, but were outplayed for most of the time I was tuned in.  Against Portugal, the US women showed no superiority in any phase of the game and were saved from elimination by a late shot that hit the goal post and bounded out of the goal and not into the goal.

I am not nearly sufficiently familiar with the subtleties/technicalities of soccer to know what the problem is there, but this team is not nearly as dominant as ones in the past have been.  If they continue to play as they have, they could easily be an early team to pack up and go home.  If that happens, there could be an interesting irony to the situations:

• The US Women protested their second-class status as compared to the US Men in terms of pay and perks.  One argument was that the US Women won World Cups and the US Men always disappointed.
• This year marks the start of equal sharing of earnings and perks for the women and the men.
• Will this year be the start of equal disappointment on the pitch for the two teams?

Next up … Gregg Drinnan’s blog, Keeping Score has been tracking the futility of the Edmonton Elks of the CFL in their home games.  The Elks lost the last time they were at home to the BC Lions by a score of 27-0.  Shutouts in the CFL are unusual in themselves, but this game was far more than merely unusual:

• That was the Elks’ 21^st consecutive home loss.
• That is now the longest home losing streak by any North American sports franchise surpassing the St Louis Browns who lost 20 home games in a row in 1953.
• The Elks’ last home victory was in October 2019
• In those 21 straight home losses, the Elks have been outscored 660-365 if my calculations are correct.
• That was the second meeting between the Elks and the Lions; the first one was also a shutout by the Lions, 22-0.  That is the first time since 1970 that one team has shut out another team twice in a season.
• Since the start of the 2021 season, the Elks’ cumulative record – – home and away – – is 7-33.  For the 50-year period between 1970 and 2020, the Elks – – then known as the Eskimos – – only missed out on being in the CFL playoff 5 times.

The Elks’ next home game will be on August 10 when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers come to visit.  The Bombers are 5-2 so far this year; that is not a good omen for Elks’ fans.

Finally, let me close again today with another anecdote involving the poet, Dorothy Parker:

• A woman told Parker, “I really can’t come to your party, I can’t bear fools.”  To which Parker replied, “That’s strange, your mother could.”

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

 

 

Most folks, when they check the standings for a sport they are interested in, go to the top of the standings to see what team is on top and what others might overtake them.  Here in Curmudgeon Central, we look at the top of the standings too – – but we always check the bottom as well because there are signs of great futility and incompetence there.  And in that spirit, let me look at the MLB standings.

The team with the worst record is the Oakland A’s.  That should not be a surprise because the A’s have traded away every good player they had who was coming up on a big payday for about the last 5 years.  You don’t always get what you paid for – – see the Mets and Yankees this year – – but you rarely get a championship contender with that sort of roster-building strategy.  The A’s are not likely to threaten the 1962 Mets’ modern era record for 120 losses in the season but they still could set a new mark for the worst run differential in MLB history.

• Previously, the A’s were on track to have a season total for run differential of minus-440 runs.
• The modern-day record is minus-349 runs.
• Today, the A’s project to end the 2023 season at minus-387 runs.

The run differential stat is interesting when you compare the A’s to the Royals who are the second-worst team in MLB this year a mere 2 games better than the A’s.  And yet, compare the run differential as of this morning:

• A’s are minus-255 runs having lost 77 games.
• Royals are minus-169 runs having lost 75 games.

There is another interesting juxtaposition of the run differential stats at the top of the AL Central Division:

• Twins record is 54-53 with a run differential of +34 runs.
• Guardians record is 53-54 with a run differential of +2 runs.

Even more strange than that is the situation in the middle of the NL East race:

• Marlins’ record is 57-50 with a run differential of minus-23 runs.
• Phillies’ record is 57-49 with a run differential of +10 runs.

Moving on … When the MLB season started back in April, lots of folks wanted to see if the rules changes for 2023 would improve the game in terms of fan experience.  Traditionalists were not convinced but the smart thing to do back then was to wait for the data to come in.  We now have 4 months of data, and the answer surely seems to be that MLB games are a better entertainment experience now than they were a year ago.

• ESPN’s baseball audience for televised national games is up 6.9%.
• Total MLB attendance at games is up 9.8%.

More people are watching games on TV and more people are going out to the stadium to see live games.  It would certainly appear that the folks who kept pointing out that there was not enough action in a baseball game that took three-and-a-half hours to hold fan attention had a point.  Games are shorter on average; scoring is up; on-base percentage is up; the stolen base has returned to the game – – and fans seem to like that a lot.

Now, if MLB would only get rid of the “ghost runner on second base” in extra-inning games …

Switching gears …  ESPN has hired Doc Rivers to be a color analyst for NBA games next season.  It appears that Mark Jackson has been “demoted” to the second announcing team and that the “A-Team” for ESPB will be Mike Breen on play-by-play with Doc Rivers and Doris Burke as the color analysts.  That means:

• Burke and Rivers are on in place of Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson

I know that lots of people love Doris Burke; I do not like her; nor do I dislike her.  I find her to be plain vanilla; I would not hit the mute button to avoid her; nor would I sit with rapt attention to be sure I caught every word she put out over the airwaves.  If you consider that the exchange of Jackson and Rivers is an exchange of former players/coaches and that there is not a huge chasm between their desirability, the new team versus the old team is an exchange of Doris Burke for Jeff Van Gundy.  Folks, that is not even close to being an upgrade for the new team.  I think that substitution clearly shows that:

• The personnel shakeups at ESPN have far more to do with costs and cost-cutting than they have to do with competency.

Next up …  Earlier this week, the Buffalo Bills held their first practice in full pads in training camp.  Normally, that event would qualify as “Meh!” on the interest scale – – but this year was different.  That practice was the first time Damar Hamlin was on a football field in pads since his cardiac arrest on the field during the Bengals/Bills game on January 2^nd of this year.  The practice went on schedule with no “unplanned incidents”.  Fans of the Bills – – and of every NFL team for that matter – – must hope that Hamlin has gotten proper and accurate medical interpretation of his physical condition leading him to return to the field.

Finally, for no specific reason, let me close today with an anecdote involving the poet Dorothy Parker:

• On hearing that the famously taciturn President Calvin Coolidge had died, she asked, “How could they tell?”

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

 

 

The MLB trade deadline is upon us but before the last-second drama hits, the Mets and Rangers made what could be an important trade.  The Mets appear to have thrown in the towel for 2023 and perhaps the Mets have abandoned their philosophy for building a championship contender.  Recall that the Mets chose to enter 2023 with a payroll that dwarfed every other MLB team in history; they had guaranteed contracts to players totaling more than $350M and more than a handful of those players were long in the tooth.  Over the weekend, the Mets traded away one of those big contracts (to 39-year-old Max Scherzer) and received in return a top minor league prospect from the Rangers.

On the surface, this deal is very simple to assess.  Here is the deal:

• Rangers get Max Scherzer – – owed about $57M through the end of 2024.
• Mets get Luisangel Acuna – – younger brother of the Braves’ Ronald Acuna, Jr.
• Rangers pay Scherzer $22.5M.
• Mets pay Scherzer the rest of what he is owed.

The easy way to look at this is that the Rangers have committed to “win now”; they lead the AL West Division this morning by 1 game over the Astros with the Angels and the Mariners lurking only about 5 games off the lead.  The Rangers have had some pitching injuries and need to bolster the starting rotation; Scherzer is a sure-fire Hall of Famer, so he fits in there like a glove.  If Luisangel Acuna turns out to be as good as his big brother, then the Mets will have won the trade over the long haul, but that remains to be seen.  MLB has a robust history of siblings who have played in the major leagues where one sibling is significantly better than the other:

• Greg Maddux and Mike Maddux
• George Brett and Ken Brett
• Gaylord Perry and Jim Perry
• Henry Aaron and Tommy Aaron
• Joe DiMaggio and Dom DiMaggio and Vince DiMaggio …

That the Rangers have committed to winning now is confirmed by another trade they made over the weekend with the Cardinals.  In that deal:

• Rangers get pitchers Jordan Montgomery and Chris Stratton
• Cards get reliver John King and two minor league prospects.

That the Mets may be changing their approach to team building might be confirmed later today if the rumors that Justin Verlander is also available for a trade materialize into another deal.  Another signal could show itself based on how the Mets position Luisangel Acuna in their minor league system.  The younger Acuna is a shortstop and a center fielder; the Mets are paying Francisco Lindor about $34M per year through the end of the 2031 season to play shortstop.  Hmmm …

Mets’ owner, Steve Cohen is purportedly the richest of the MLB owners; Forbes says his net worth is $17.6B.  Is he adjusting his approach to team building or is he merely shedding some big contracts that he does not think have paid off properly?  As far as I am concerned, the answer to that question is as interesting as the answer to the question:

• Can Luisangel Acuna live up to his brother’s example?

Cohen bought the Mets after the truncated 2020 season paying $2.4B for the club.  At the time he said his goal was to have the Mets “win the World Series” sometime over a “three to five year” time span.  This year marks the third year of his ownership and the Mets have yet to win the NL East let alone the World Series.  Cohen made his fortune managing hedge funds so the idea of changing one’s strategy/tactics as new information becomes available is certainly something he is familiar with.  I will be very interested in watching Mets’ personnel moves over the next year or two.

Moving on …  The US economy runs on capitalism.  You can like that or decry that, but you cannot deny that.  One of the foundation pieces of capitalism is the Law of Supply and Demand.  The tenets of that law are intuitively obvious, and they hold sway in the marketplace.  Here is the latest example.

Last month, the baseball fans in Oakland staged a “reverse boycott” where they organized to show up en masse at an A’s game seeking to demonstrate that there is indeed “fan interest” in Oakland in MLB and to urge the current owner, John Fisher, to sell the team to someone who would keep the A’s in Oakland.  A little more than 28,000 people showed up for that game in June.  The A’s average attendance is not quite 10,000 fans per game absent that anomalous game.

Organizers are doing an encore performance.  The A’s will host their area rival SF Giants on August 5^th and the hope is that there will be a large and raucous audience for that game at whatever they are calling the Oakland Coliseum these days.  John Fisher paid attention in his Economics 101 course to realize what he should do for that game on August 5^th.  There will be greater demand than usual; so, he raised the prices for tickets since the supply remained the same.  Brilliant!

Reports say that the cheapest seat in the house – – the house being the single worst MLB facility of them all – – will be $44 on August 5^th.  For the other games against the Giants in this series, the cheap seats cost $27; soon after this encore “reverse boycott”, the cheap seats for game against the first place Rangers will cost $10.  No mystery here …

Finally, since capitalism has been part of today’s rant, let me close with two observations about that system:

“The only trouble with capitalism is capitalists; they’re too damn greedy.”  [Herbert Hoover]

And …

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”  [Sir Winston Churchill]

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

 

 

Recall that ESPN fired – or did not renew contracts – with 20 of their on-air personalities about 2 weeks ago.  Most of the folks cut adrift by ESPN remain in that status but Steve Young has gotten himself a new job.  Young will be an assistant coach for a girls’ high school flag football team in California.  Young has two daughters on the flag football team at Menlo HS in California and his assistant coaching duties are expected to be on the “offensive side” of the game.  The head coach at Menlo HS for girls’ flag football is another former Niners’ QB, John Paye whose football career is sort of interesting.

Paye graduated from Menlo HS as a multi-sport athlete and was the QB at Stanford in the mid-1980s and he had the “honor” of following John Elway into that position.  When he graduated from Stanford, Paye was drafted by the Niners in the 10^th round of the NFL Draft and spent two years with the Niners but never saw the field in a real game.  Two QBs ahead of Paye on the Niners’ roster at the time were Joe Montana and Steve Young.  John Paye was a QB – – but more importantly, he was around a bunch of really good QBs who kept him on the bench.

Next … Last winter in the MLB offseason, there was a bit of drama surrounding the free agency of Carlos Correa.  The Giants had him signed but then he failed their physical.  He had a lower leg injury several years ago and that seemed to bother the Giants’ medical folks, so Correa was a free agent again.  There was a similar flirtation with the Mets that did not stand up to scrutiny for very long.  In the end, Correa re-signed with the Twins where he had played in 2022.

Weep not for Carlos Correa; he is making $36M to play baseball this year for the Twins.  But at age 29 – – next month – – he should be at or near the peak of his career and this year’s offensive numbers belie that status:

• Batting average = .228
• On base percentage = .304
• OPS = .705

Those are not “shameful numbers” except when they are juxtaposed with a salary of $36M for 2023 and he will also make $36M in 2024 and 2025.  I am too lazy to track down where his current salary ranks among the top earners in MLB, but I will guess that at $36M for 2023, Correa certainly ranks in the Top 20 earners and maybe in the Top 10.  So, the question now is:

• Were those medical folks in SF and NY correct in having Correa “flunk a physical” – – OR – –
• Is this just a down year for Correa whose career OPS is .119 higher than this year’s figure?

Moving on …  The owner of the Tottenham Hotspurs in the EPL is in a bit of hot water.  Joe Lewis – – neither the boxer nor the comedian, both of whom are dead – – has been charged with insider trading here in NY.  US Attorneys there have alleged that Lewis shared inside corporate information with “friends, associates and romantic partners” over a three- year period that overlapped COVID times.  Tottenham refused to make any comment on the matter, saying that none of this affected the club or the team as is likely the case for now.

However, the former owner of Chelsea in the EPL was ultimately forced to sell his club based on international sanctions related to the Chelsea owner’s “close ties” to Vladimir Putin.  When Chelsea was on the market, there was plenty of interest in acquiring the team which ultimately sold for $5.4B.  I don’t have any idea what the Tottenham club might command on the open market, but if the “Middle East Money Men” take a shine to the club, the price could be stratospheric.

Switching gears …  In news that is clearly less economically uplifting, I read a report that the XFL lost $60M in the course of its season.  Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson acquired the XFL from Vince McMahon when the league folded for the second time during COVID.  The good news is that the league made it through to the end of its season without bouncing checks hither, thither and yon and that its TV deal with ESPN remains intact.

The XFL – – call this XFL 3.0 – – projects that it will take in $100M in revenue in the 2024 season which would be a great success for this twice-failed league.  The problem I have with the projection is that only 20% of that projection is going to come from the TV deal with ESPN.  Seeing how XFL 3.0 is going to make up $80M in things like live gate and local partnerships is not an easy thing for me to do.

Let me be clear … I hope that XFL 3.0 and USFL 2.0 both succeed and continue to provide pro football events for fan consumption on a continuous basis.  But that sort of revenue projection from XFL 3.0 requires some heavy lifting by the league.  At least they have a physical specimen like “The Rock” to help with that heavy lifting.

Switching gears … I mentioned earlier this week that Saquon Barkley had $900K of incentives added to what he would have earned by signing the franchise tag that the Giants put on him.  If I understand the reports on the details of those incentives that have been appended to the deal, here is what must happen for Barkley to earn the full $900K:

• Rush for 1350 yards or more (80 yards per game)
• Catch 65 passes (4 receptions per game)
• Score 11 TDs – – AND – –
• Giants make the playoffs.

Finally, let me close today with two observations by George Bernard Shaw that seem eerily appropriate in 2023:

“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”

And …

“We all profess the deepest regard for liberty; but no sooner does anyone claim to exercise it than we declare with horror that we are in favor of liberty but not od license, and demand indignantly whether true freedom can ever mean freedom to do wrong, to preach sedition and immorality, to utter blasphemy.  Yet this is exactly what liberty does mean.”

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

 

 

Perhaps we are witnessing the birth of a new social movement analogous to the #meetoo movement that seeks to empower sexually harassed/assaulted people to make known their abusers and the abuses they have suffered.  Call it the #ustoo movement and let the movement represent college football players who have suffered hazing and torment as the form of abuse.  The ongoing saga at Northwestern that I wrote about earlier this week could be example number one in the #ustoo movement and yesterday news came of example number two.

Former players and former staff members at the University of Minnesota allege that head coach PJ Fleck is running the team as a “cult” and that the locker room is filled with “intimidation and toxicity”.  One former player said that Fleck interfered with standard medical protocols trying to get players back from injury sooner than normal by “minimizing the seriousness of some pretty horrendous injuries”.  In addition, there are stories of something called the “Fleck Bank” whereby players could earn brownie points they could use later to offset discipline for things like a failed drug test or some other violation of school or team rules.

CBSSports.com had a report on this yesterday.  That report said that CBS Sports had received a memo from a former football staff member back in 2018 saying that the team medical staff was illegally prescribing a powerful anti-inflammatory/pain reducer and that the team medical staff routinely circumvented the best practices laid out by the NCAA Independent Medical Care standards.  Here is a link to that report from yesterday.

Interestingly, the school did not issue a statement saying they were going to investigate these assertions.  Instead, this is what Minnesota’s AD said:

“P.J. and our program are unique.  They put themselves out there in new and different ways — but always in a first-class manner — and after nearly seven years, it is clear to me, that is what makes P.J. and our program so successful.”

Two comments here:

1. “Unique” is not a synonym for “good and proper”.  Ted Kaczynski was unique.  Charles Manson was unique.  Vlad the Impaler was unique.
2. As to Minnesota football being “so successful”, they have not been to a meaningful bowl game since the Gophers won the Rose Bowl game in 1961 and that includes the 6 seasons under PJ Fleck.

The other big news from yesterday related to college football was that Colorado was leaving the PAC-12 to join the Big-12.  This is sort of a “back to its roots” move by Colorado in that the Buffaloes were members of the Big-12 and its predecessor, the Big-8, from 1948 to 2010.  Colorado has not set the world on fire in its time in the PAC-12; its cumulative conference record since joining has been 27-76.

Colorado will transition its schedule by 2024, so this is not looking like a long and drawn-out process.  The Big-12 has already added 4 teams for the 2023 season:

• BYU
• Cincy
• Houston
• UCF

The addition of Colorado will put 15 teams in the Big-12; odd numbers in conferences make for difficult scheduling problems so do not be surprised to read about the Big-12 courting some other school – or maybe 3 – in the near future.

Colorado has gotten some national attention in the last several months by putting Deion Sanders in charge of the football program there, but Colorado football has not been anything special on its own for decades.  So, I don’t want to imply that the PAC-12 losing Colorado is a mortal blow to the stature of the PAC-12.  But it may just be a tipping point.

I said above that the Big-12 might be interested in expanding by another 3 teams to make it an even 18 teams in the conference.  Imagine for a moment that is the case and the Big-12 begins to schmooze the other 3 so-called “Four Corner Schools” – – Arizona, Arizona St. and Utah.  If all the “Four Corner Schools” – along with the already departed “So Cal Schools” – defect, the entire South Division of the PAC-12 will have jumped ship.  And that would be the de facto demise of what Bill Walton likes to call “The Conference of Champions”.

Moving on …  The Boston Celtics just gave Jalen Brown a super-max contract worth $304M over 5 years.  The payout breaks down like this:

• 2024-25: $52.4 million
• 2025-26: $56.6 million
• 2026-27: $60.8 million
• 2027-28: $64.9 million
• 2028-29: $69.1 million

Here is what I do not understand.  Jalen Brown is a really good player – – but he is NOT the best player on the Celtics’ roster.  That would be Jason Tatum who will be playing out his contract next season and will be looking for a huge payday next summer.  Can the Celtics afford to have two players on the roster making $60M per year – roughly.  And if they can afford the cost, what does that mean about the efficacy of the NBA’s salary cap rules?  The NBA salary cap for 2022-23 was $124M.

Finally, here is an entry from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Amish:  A sect of self-sustaining people whose way of life is so different from the current ideological mainstream that it’s a wonder nobody’s bombed them yet.”

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

 

 

I mentioned yesterday that the NFL has suspended its 10^th player this year for violating the NFL’s gambling protocols.  That player was Eyioma Uwazurike, DE, Broncos.  Yesterday, Broncos’ head coach Sean Payton said the NFL bears some responsibility in the slew of suspensions because its messaging to the players is confusing.  According to a report at CBSSports.com, here is how Payton explained the policy in less legal terms to his players in the Spring:

“You can’t bet on NFL football, ever, ever, ever.  I don’t give a (expletive) what it is. The other thing is, it’s the same as the gun policy. You can’t bet on nothing if you’re at your facility, your hotel, your airplane. So, wherever you can’t carry a gun, you can’t place a bet.”

Crystalized simplicity there.  That is an important coaching skill – – taking a complicated thing and making it into a simple thing.

Speaking of football coaches, Deion Sanders had a scheduled procedure to remove blood clots from his right leg and to straighten toes on his left foot last week.  Reports say he is recovering and will be back on the job next week.  With Sean Payton on the job with the Broncos and Deion Sanders leading the Colorado Buffaloes up the road in Boulder, CO, football fans in that region should have plenty of news to chew on once the season kicks off…

A little to the east in Michigan, the coaching news is a bit less positive.  Reports yesterday said that Jim Harbaugh might face a 4-game suspension this year for either lying to or purposely misleading NCAA investigators who were looking into possible recruiting infractions that happened during the “dark period” back when COVID imposed additional recruiting limitations.  Harbaugh has said he did not lie, nor did he intentionally mislead anyone but that he gave some wrong answers to questions because he did not know the details of what had happened.  This does not even rise to the level of a tempest in a teapot because if indeed Harbaugh must sit out the first 4 games of 2023, he will miss being on the sidelines for four home games in Ann Arbor against:

1. East Carolina
2. UNLV
3. Bowling Green
4. Rutgers

If the NCAA wanted to punish him in something that was even marginally meaningful, they would suspend him for the final four games of 2023 as follows:

1. Purdue (at home)
2. At Penn State
3. At Maryland
4. Ohio State (at home).

And staying with the thread of football coaches in the news today, the floodgates have opened in terms of lawsuits related to the hazing scandal at Northwestern that saw Head Coach, Pat Fitzgerald lose his job there.  I am sure that I have not included all the specific defendants in the myriad lawsuits here, but I am sure the following folks have been named so far:

• Coach Pat Fitzgerald
• Northwestern President Michael Schill
• Northwestern AD Derrick Gragg
• The Northwestern Board of Trustees

I asked a friend who is not a litigator but a tax attorney how and why the Board of Trustees were named as defendants in some if not all the suits.  My question assumed that the members of the Board were not likely to be present in the football locker room after practices such that any of them might have been aware of activities that are clearly improper and are in fact criminal in some states.  His explanation demonstrated my lack of legal training.

He said that the objective of the lawsuits is to get money for the plaintiffs as recompense for the plaintiffs’ suffering and degradation during the hazing periods.  There is no way to undo what happened to them, so “punishment” in this matter comes down to guilty parties exchanging money with the victims to “right the wrongs”.  Since this whole matter has become an economic one, the strategy on the plaintiffs’ side is to get at the endowment fund for Northwestern University because that is where the BIG money resides in this case.  [Aside:  A quick Google search reveals that the current size of the Northwestern endowment is $14.1B].

He also said that most if not all these suits would be settled without a trial for several reasons:

• Privacy:  There would be embarrassing information revealed in an open trial affecting both sides so there is motivation to settle and to put non-disclosure agreements in place.
• Risk:  Juries are unpredictable both in terms of the verdict they present and then in the amount of damages they award.  Remember that the USFL won a suit against the NFL in the 1980s and the jury there awarded the USFL one dollar in damages.

Finally, since today has been about football coaches, let me close with a quote from Spike Dykes, former head football coach at Texas Tech, after his team lost a game and did not play well:

“Oh, we played about three tons of buzzard puke this afternoon.”

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

 

 

Picking up on yesterday’s rant about the “devalued running back” in today’s NFL, the news this morning is that Saquon Barkley will sign a 1-year deal with the Giants and will not be a holdout in training camp or in the regular season.  There is an element of face-saving to the reported terms of the deal, but to me, the Giants are the clear winner in this negotiation.

• The deal is for one year only.  Barkley wanted a longer-term deal and reportedly wanted more than $20M guaranteed.  Barkley’s agent can say that they were forced to take a 1-year deal because of a provision in the CBA involving players who have a franchise tag that they refuse to sign by a certain date.  The net result is that the Giants did not accede to player demands.
• Under the franchise tag, Barkley would have made $10.1M guaranteed.  Under the deal signed today, he will make $10.1M plus $900K in incentives meaning he could make as much as $11.0M.  Two million of that total goes to Barkley immediately as a signing bonus.

That leaves the Raiders’ and Josh Jacobs as the remaining team/running back battleground.  Like Barkley, he can sign his franchise tag and make $10.1M guaranteed this year; also, like Barkley, he has said he will not report to training camp and has contemplated sitting out the entire 2023 regular season.  I think there are two circumstances in the Jacobs/Raiders negotiations that are unique:

1. Last year, the Raiders chose not to pick up Jacobs’ fifth-year option on his rookie contract.  Had they done so, he would be under contract this year for a little over $8M and none of this would be in play.
2. Raiders’ head coach, Josh McDaniels, had success in New England running an offense that did not use a “featured running back”.  His offense with the Pats was basically “running back by committee”; so, Jacobs and his agent may be trying to get McDaniels to behave contrary to the way he did in the past that was successful for him.

Stay tuned here …

Moving on …  The NFL has suspended another player for the 2023 season due to gambling infractions.  The NFL simply said that the suspension was based on the player betting on NFL games.  That such behavior would be contrary to NFL policy as set forth in the CBA should be patently obvious to anyone with two motor neurons close enough to play pickleball with each other.  And yet, here we are …  The player cannot petition for reinstatement until next July meaning that he will not be able to take part in any off-season/free agent/trade situations until then.

Next up …  Disney Corp CEO, Bob Iger, has said that there can be major restructuring of assets within the company; everything is on the table including possibly selling off part of ESPN to “strategic partners”.  [Aside:  I would not take that literally; I doubt Disney would sell off all or part of the Mickey Mouse brand.]  Normally, news like that tends to get traction on the “Financial Pages” of your morning newspaper and would have no place here until and unless a deal is made whereby ESPN is bought out by National Veeblefetzer.  But this story took an interesting twist early out of the gate.  I ran across a report with this headline:

• Disney Reportedly Talked To NFL, NBA, MLB About Equity Partnership In ESPN

As of this morning, Disney owns 80% of ESPN and Hearst Communications owns the other 20%.  So, there is plenty of room for any or all those sports leagues to jump in and become a strategic partner with Disney.  And if that were to happen, it would be such a bad turn of events.

Look, the major sports leagues already have their own TV networks on cable.  MLB Network is the best of the lot by a mile, and it is NEVER the first thing I tune in to see what’s going on.  NFLN and NBA TV are virtual wastelands of saccharine-sweet babbling and fawning over anyone associated with those leagues.  ESPN is certainly not perfect as a programming entity, but is that what sports fans want ESPN to become?

The state of “real journalism” at ESPN is on life-support.  But there is more there than at any of the league-owned networks.  Take the Daniel Snyder situation.  If there ever was a network that had access to people knowledgeable about the situation, it would be NFLN.  Is that where stories broke or where reports advanced the process that led to what amounted to a forced sale of the Washington Commanders?  No, all that impetus came from reporting at ESPN and at The Washington Post.  Any “investigative journalism” that might survive at ESPN if a sports league “buys a piece” would surely focus on some other sports league(s).  The precedent and the example for this already exists in full view.

In addition, when leagues negotiate with ESPN for media rights or media rights renewals, that would put the leagues on both sides of the negotiation table.  Can anyone spell “awkward”?

This is such a bad Idea that I think it has a better than 50/50 chance of happening.  If the NFL – for example – bought a 35% stake in ESPN, it could fold or at least drastically contract NFLN meaning cost savings.  Moreover, when ESPN takes in advertising dollars involved with NFL games, 35% of those dollars are essentially revenue to the league.  It would open another revenue stream and the NFL has never been averse to such a turn of events.

Finally, let me close today with these words from Casey Stengel:

“A lot of people my age are dead at the present time.”

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