The Sports Curmudgeon

Today is Presidents Day.  Great Presidents exhibit leadership in times of difficulty; not-so-great Presidents fail to do so.  Not to worry, I have no intention of turning today’s rant into a political jeremiad; I mention this point because in the narrow world of sports, we are seeing the continuation of a lack of leadership in one of our major sports.  Naturally, I am referring to Major League Baseball.

The owners declared a lockout back in early December.  Pitchers and catchers were supposed to report to Spring Training a week ago; Spring Training games were supposed to begin a couple of days from now.  The regular season is scheduled to start at the end of March.

So, what happened…?

• Between the beginning of December and last weekend, the two sides negotiating the new Collective Bargaining Agreement only managed to find time on their busy schedules to meet a handful of times.
• Pitchers and catchers could not report to Spring Training camps that were locked out.
• The first week or so of Spring Training games have already been canceled.
• Supposedly, if there is no agreement which will allow Spring Training to begin by February 28^th, the regular season will not start on time.

Most of the national media have chosen to blame Commissioner Rob Manfred for this debacle.  Make no mistake, Manfred deserves a huge helping of opprobrium today and that helping should be slathered in a gravy derived from mule snot.  At the same time, let us not forget to serve a similar helping of that concoction to Tony Clark as the head of the Players’ Association.  In order to have meaningful negotiating sessions, it takes all parties to the dispute to come together and at least try to come to a resolution of the problems.  Tony Clark has not exactly been pushing for the sides to burn the midnight oil to get to a degree.  Recall that – according to reports – when Manfred and the owners proposed to have a Federal mediator brought in to try to assist in the negotiations, it was Clark and the union that would not agree.

I said above that this situation represents the continuation of a lack of leadership in baseball.  Here’s why…  Baseball had significant “labor unrest” from the 1970s through 1994 when a mid-season strike by the players caused the cancellation of the end of the regular season and the World Series.  Then there was a period of calm on the management/labor front for about 25 years until 2020 – The Year of COVID-19.  How or why that viral species managed to resuscitate the old labor/management anger in baseball is a mystery to me, but it did.

Take yourself back to the earliest days of the pandemic; we had lockdowns because there were no vaccines or effective medicines available.  We were not even sure about the transmission modes for the virus; handwashing became for a while the national pastime.  Just about every sport was on hiatus – – but by summertime it seemed that baseball could begin a “return to normalcy” with games played in front of empty grandstands.  I assert that would have been a huge win for baseball itself had both the owners and players chosen to avail themselves of that opportunity; both sides found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The owners cried poor; without fans in the stands, they would be paying players based on an economic model that assumed the live gate revenue stream would be intact.  The players pointed to their signed contracts and demanded nothing less than a full pro-rata share of that contract for games played in the regular season.  And with that divide, the MLB season in 2020 was a meager 60 games.

Think back on another point in the early summer of 2020.  With virtually all US sports in mothballs, the TV networks were scrambling to fill air time.  They were showing Korean League baseball on a routine basis because if they did not do that, they would be rummaging around in their archives to show reruns of My Mother the Car.  [Aside:  If you do not recognize how desperate the TV execs would have to have been to do that, Google is your friend.]  I would not be the least bit surprised to learn that ESPN was deep into negotiations to acquire the rights to Saudi Arabian camel racing simply as a way to put live sports on the air.

Baseball had the opportunity to seize the day and to become the first sport to get back on the air and they found a way not to allow that to happen.  And that was a significant mistake on the part of both sides.  Baseball as a sport has seen its TV audiences shrink; there are myriad hypotheses as to the causes there but one of the causes is that the baseball fanbase is losing older folks and not replacing them with younger folks.  Many people attribute that aging of the fanbase to a lack of interest in baseball by young sports fans.

If major league baseball were to have been the only live major US sport on TV for the months of June, July and August of 2020, there was an opportunity to engage and attract younger audiences who might have grown tired of watching college basketball reruns from 1986.  That younger audience did not get that opportunity; the delayed “Opening Day” in 2020 was on July 23^rd when the NFL Training Camps were already in progress.

The owners would not take short-term losses in exchange for the opportunity to attract new fans who could add to live gate revenues and TV audiences down the road.  Players would not shave even a farthing off of their pro-rata contract demands.  And that set the stage…

Now,, the two sides cannot agree on how many teams will make the playoffs in baseball.  They cannot agree on revenue sharing among the major league teams.  They cannot agree to have a mediator try to get them to a resolution of the situation.  There is a huge failure of leadership on both sides of the table and fans should not take sides in the matter.  For anyone who thinks that one of the sides is “less culpable” then the other – – thereby making it one’s favorite in the situation – – let me suggest that all one does there is to identify the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs.

Major League Baseball needs positive and effect leadership on this President’s Day; it has seen none of that from the combatants in the Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations.  In fact, it seems that that two sides have fallen into the habit of opposing any and all things favored by the other side simply out of habit.  That leads me to conclude with this observation about “habit” from author Marcel Proust:

            “The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.”

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

 

 

P.J. O’Rourke died earlier this week. He was a humorist and satirist par excellence.  He was an early contributor to National Lampoon and eventually its editor in chief.  Other writings found their way into publications with varied audiences such as Car and Driver, Playboy and Rolling Stone while still finding time to be a panelist on NPR’s program Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.  His conservative/libertarian views were never mainstream but reading his defenses of such positions was always entertaining.

Rest in peace, P. J. O’Rourke.

Having been off the air for the last 4 days, let me loop back and comment on things that happened several days ago.  During the Super Bowl game, there was a minor “dust up” on the sidelines when Aaron Donald pushed Joe Burrow out of bounds.  I said to the folks I was watching the game with, that was the time when replay would actually be valuable.  The officials had to “break up” a confrontation and that confrontation had nothing to do with “game action” since the play had been whistled dead.  That should trigger and instant replay all by itself with two specific purposes:

• First and foremost, who started the kerfuffle?
• Second, did anyone else join in or respond/retaliate to the start of the kerfuffle?

Based on replay, the referee can determine who started it and what he did.  That could lead to a penalty – – or even to an ejection.  Same goes for players who retaliated in some way that was disproportionate to the instigation.  Normally, I am not a fan of replay since it stops the game and sometimes does not unambiguously “get it right”.  But in this case, I believe that replay has a larger beneficial effect on the sport.

• All it will take is a couple of ejections of key players from a game for the coaches to begin to pay a lot more attention to “controlled aggression” as opposed to “unconstrained aggression”.

Next, I want to talk about the NBA trade that sent Ben Simmons, Seth Curry, Andre Drummond and a couple of first round draft picks to the Nets for James Harden and Paul Milsap.  Fans and sports radio commentators in Philly are basically in ecstasy over the trade; one of them said that there was no team in the league that could now match up with the Sixers’ triumvirate of Joel Embiid, James Harden and Tobias Harris.  From his point of view, only a cruel twist of fate might keep the Sixers from the NBA championship this year.  I hope that no regular reader here will be surprised to learn that I am far less optimistic about this player exchange than that.

First, the Sixers just get a whole lot worse on defense than they were a week ago – – and that is with Ben Simmons refusing to play for the team for “mental health reasons”.  Going all the way back to his college days at Arizona State, Harden was an offensive force and a defensive liability.  However, as his NBA career progressed and he became a dominant offensive force, his defense eroded to a similar extent.  My personal assessment over the past year or two is that Harden no longer even tries to expend much energy on the defensive end of the floor; he gives up points almost to the extent that he creates points.

So, comparing Harden to Ben Simmons – – who similarly created no points and allowed no points while on the sidelines this season – -, the trade would be seem to be a wash.  But wait; there’s more…

James Harden has found himself “at odds” with a variety of very good players in the NBA when Harden and those other very good players had to share the court and the ball.  Perhaps the names Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving resonate with  you…  Harden has maneuvered a trade for himself twice in the last 14 months; what is it about James Harden’s recent history to make one think that he and Joel Embiid will become inseparable bosom buddies?

Maybe all those “Harden rough spots” will be ironed out in Philly.  This trade seems to have had a “Lourdes Effect” on healing since Ben Simmons’ mental health issues appear to have been miraculously abated by moving him to a team about 100 miles to the northeast of where he used to be.

Moving on…  About three weeks ago, the first sportsbook connected to an MLB stadium opened at Nationals Park in Washington DC.  The book is operated by BetMGM, and it is linked to an app available from Bet MGM that allows for in-game wagering on Nats’ games so long as the wagers are placed withing a two-block radius of the park.  According to the announcement of the sportsbook’s opening:

• The 4,000-square-foot on-site sportsbook will offer full-service beverage and dining options, six betting windows, betting kiosks, and 40 big-screen TVs year-round.

This is only one such manifestation of MLB’s new cozy relationship with new “corporate partners” who happen to be in the sports betting “industry”.  If you want to look for hypocrisy, look no further than baseball’s gambling relationships today and the continued ostracization of Shoeless Joe Jackson and/or Pete Rose.

Finally, I began today noting the passing of P.J. O’Rourke; let me close with two of his observations about the American human condition:

“No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity.”

And …

“There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible. “

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

 

 

I managed to make it through the two-week gap between Conference Championship Games and the Super Bowl without mentioning the upcoming game or the storylines surrounding the upcoming game.  Actually, the biggest NFL news in this two-week stretch was totally focused off-field:

• Tom Brady is retiring.
• New allegations of sexual assault involving Washington Commanders’ owner Daniel Snyder.
• Brian Flores sues the NFL and three specific teams

Now it is time for a Football Friday focus on more upbeat stuff.  Let me begin as usual with a review of the abbreviated Six-Pack from two weeks ago:

• College:  0-0-0
• NFL:  2-1-0
• Total:  2-1-0
• Money Line Parlay: 0-1  Net loss for the week = $100.

Those results bring the cumulative records for the season to:

• College:  15-20-0  [Unimpressive]
• NFL:  46-38-2  [It is “in the black” even with the vig.]
• Total:  61-58-2  [It is “in the red” with the vig.]
• Money Line Parlays:  7-13  [Nevertheless, this shows a profit of $267.]

Obviously, there will be no Six-Pack this week.  I will make a selection in the game, and I will cobble together a parlay bet using the Money Line odds and a prop bet or two.

 

College Football Commentary:

 

There is an interesting situation ongoing at Auburn university.  Head coach Bryan Harsin is under fire there and players are “entering the transfer portal” en masse along with assistant coaches jumping ship.  Auburn boosters cannot be happy that the team finished the season 6-7 – the first time since 2012 the Tigers were below .500.  That negativity is only magnified by the fact that Auburn lost its last 5 games in a row.

The “come-from-ahead defeat” in the Iron Bowl last year had to be a gut-punch for the Auburn faithful because it came on the heels of two losses in a row to Mississippi State and South Carolina – – not exactly powerhouses.  Moreover, earlier in the season Texas A&M and Georgia both beat the Tigers by three scores or more.  Last year was Harsin’s first year at Auburn coming there after seven successful years at Boise State where his teams went 69-19.

But that is not the worst of it…  Harsin’s contract was signed last year; it was reportedly a 6-year deal worth $31.5M; that works out to be $5.25M per year.  Just a few weeks ago, Auburn gave basketball coach Bruce Pearl a contract extension worth $50M over 8 years.

• Do the math there and the head basketball coach at an SEC school is going to make more money per year than the head football coach.
• That is heresy in SEC country.

 

NFL Commentary:

 

One storyline for the game deals with Joe Burrow should he lead the Bengals to a win.  That would make Burrow the only player ever to win the Heisman Trophy, an NCAA National Championship and a Super Bowl.  When I first heard that statement, I thought it could not possibly be right after 55 years of Super Bowls – – but it checks out.  Joe Namath won a Super Bowl and a National Championship but did not come close to winning the Heisman which went to John Huarte in 1964.

I have seen a lot of speculation that Jerry Rice’s record for receiving yards in a Super Bowl game (215 yards) might be eclipsed in this game.  Two WRs here have had breakout games in the last month or so that might threaten the mark:

• JaMarr Chase had 266 yards receiving against the Chiefs in Week 17 of the regular season.
• Cooper Kupp had 189 yards receiving in the Rams win over the Bucs in the divisional round of the playoffs.

It would be embarrassing for the Bengals if Kupp were to break Rice’s record in the game on Sunday.  Jerry Rice’s record happened in Super Bowl 23 – – the Niners beat the Bengals in that game.  If a record that stood for 30+ years and was set against the Bengals were to be broken against the Bengals again, that would not be a happy thing for folks in Cincy.

When the Bengals beat the Titans to advance to the AFC Championship Game, they did so despite allowing the Titans to register 9 quarterback sacks.  That ties an NFL playoff record:

• Chiefs sacked Bills’ QBs 9 times in January 1967.
• Niners sacked Bears’ QBs 9 times in January 1985.
• Browns sacked Jets’ QBs 9 times in January 1987
• Chiefs sacked Oilers’ (now Titans’) QBs 9 times in January 1994.

The big difference here is that the Chiefs in ’67, the Niners, the Browns and the Chiefs in ‘94 all won those games where they recorded 9 sacks.  Somehow, that was not enough for this year’s Titans.

Time for a Quick Quiz…  Which play call was the dumbest one in NFL playoff history:

• The Chiefs and Andy Reid opting to run a play from the 1-yardline at the end of the first half against the Bengals with no time outs and only a few seconds on the clock

OR…

• The Seahawks and Pete Carroll not handing the ball to Marshawn Lynch at the Patriots’ 1-yardline at the end of Super Bowl 49.

Fifty words or less…  My answer is the Seahawks call was worse because it was the Super Bowl and not a Conference Championship game and because it was at the end of the game not in the first half.  That is my answer, and I am sticking to it…

And mentioning that game segues into the next area for comment.  Al Michaels will be calling the game on Sunday, and he also called the Seahawks/Pats Super Bowl game back in 2015.  This will be his last game with NBC; his contract is up, and NBC is going to move on and put Mike Tirico on the microphone for the Sunday Night Football package starting next year.  Just a few comments on that issue alone:

• Mike Tirico is a good play-by-play announcer; Al Michaels is a great play-by-play announcer.
• Reportedly, Michaels was on board with this transition back when NBC hired Tirico away from ESPN thinking that at the end of his contract he would retire at age 77.  According to rumors, that is no longer the case and Michaels is supposedly weighing options to “take his talents elsewhere”.
• All of that is good news for NFL fans and not-nearly-so-good news for NBC.

The most prevalent rumor is that Michaels will sign with Amazon – – yes, THAT Amazon – – because Amazon will have the rights to Thursday Night Football starting next season.  Another tantalizing rumor has it that Troy Aikman will bolt from FOX and join Michaels as the Amazon announcing team.

What is interesting to me in all this is that most rumors have ESPN “standing pat” with their Monday Night troika and 10 more ManningCast episodes on ESPN2 for next season.  At the same time, Louis Riddick from that Monday night troika has an interview with the Steelers for their open GM position.  There are loads of moving parts in the announcers’ shuffle this year; for me, the best news is that Al Michaels is probably not going to ride off into the sunset.  From my perspective, Al Michaels still has his fastball working…

Here are comments on the Conference Championship games from two weeks ago…

Rams 20  Niners 17:  It was another nail-biter of a game keeping with the theme of the NFL playoffs ever since the mass blowouts in the wildcard round.  The Rams dominated the stat sheet outgaining the Niners by 114 yards.  The Niners led 17-7 to start the fourth quarter but that quarter belonged to the Rams:

• The Niners had 3 possessions in the 4^th quarter; they went Punt, Punt, INT.
• The Rams had 4 possessions in the 4^th quarter; they went TD, FG, FG, kneel out the clock.

The Rams were without any time outs for the final 10 minutes of the game.  They tried two challenges in the second half and lost both and they wasted a time out by not getting the play called into the huddle in a reasonable time.  I cannot recall ever seeing an NFL team with no time outs left with that much time left on the clock.

Bengals 27  Chiefs 24 (OT):  The bad call of the day was the call I referenced in the Quick Quiz above.  The Chiefs led 21-10 and had a chip shot field goal in front of them – – and they did not take the opportunity.  It happened too early in the game to say definitively that it determined the outcome, but those points would have looked awfully good in terms of game momentum.  The Chiefs’ offense simply went dormant in the second half – and in the OT; here are the outcomes of the Chief’s possessions after halftime:

• 5 plays and a PUNT
• 5 plays and a PUNT
• 2 plays and an INT
• 3-and out
• 3-and-out
• 14 plays leading to a FG
• 3 plays and an INT

Lots of people pointed to defensive adjustments made by the Bengals at halftime that put the brakes on the Chiefs’ offense.  If that is indeed the case, that is an indictment of Eric Bienemy as the offensive coordinator/play-caller for the Chiefs.  Remember, Bienemy is the poster child for “deserving Black coaches” who seem not to get head coaching offers.  Then go look at the offensive output for his offense in the second half and OT of a Conference Championship Game…

 

The Super Bowl Game:

 

(Sun 6:30 PM EST  Rams – 4 vs. Bengals (48.5):  These lines started out at these numbers two weeks ago and have oscillated around these numbers by only a half-point either way for the entire time.  The oddsmakers really read the mood of bettors for this game very accurately.

Obviously, there will be a lot of focus on the Bengals’ OL and how it protects Joe Burrow from a strong Rams’ defensive pass rush.  Remember, this is the OL that gave up those 9 sacks to the Titans’ defense…  I think that is going to be a problem for the Bengals for much of the game; Burrow bailed out the OL in the Titans game; does he have any pixie dust left in his pocket?

Nonetheless, I think one key to this game is everyone in the Rams’ secondary not named Jalen Ramsey.  No matter who Ramsey is assigned to cover on a play, he is going to do a good job more than 90% of the time.  However, if Jalen Ramsey is a triple scoop hot fudge sundae, the rest of the Rams’ defensive backfield is low-fat vanilla frozen yogurt.  If those “other guys” do not kick it up a notch in this game, Joe Burrow could throw for 450 yards – even if he gets sacked a half dozen times along the way.

Another key will be the Rams’ ability to run the football against the Bengals run defense which ranked 5^th in the NFL in the regular season giving up only 102.5 yards per game but that defense has allowed 127.3 yards per game in the Bengals 3 post season games.

My selections are:

• Bengals +4
• Bengals/Rams OVER 48.5

My Parlay suggestion for the weekend:

• Bengals on the Money Line @ +180
• Cooper Kupp’s longest pass reception OVER 27.5 yards @ minus-110
• $100 wager wins $435

            As noted above, this is the last of this season’s Football Friday offerings.  Also noted above is the fact that there ought to be significant shuffling of NFL game announcing assignments once next season kicks off.  So, let me end this final Football Friday with the lyrics that Dandy Don Meredith would croon on Monday Night Football about 50 years ago when the outcome of a game was no longer in doubt:

“Turn out the lights, the party’s over
They say that, ‘All good things must end’
Let’s call it a night, the party’s over
And tomorrow starts the same old thing again…”

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

 

 

There is a disturbing common thread in two stories related to the sports world that broke in the past day or so.  That common thread is alleged sexual assault.  Let me start with the story that has – at least for the moment – a measure of positivity associated with it; the headline for that story is that LA Dodgers’ pitcher, Trevor Bauer, will not face criminal charges coming out of a police investigation into allegations of sexual assault.  That investigation took five months; there were two incidents cited in the allegations; here is how the LA Times reported the bottom line in the matter:

“The district attorney opted not to file assault charges in the first encounter in April and domestic violence charges in the second encounter in May, determining there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bauer committed a crime.”

MLB has held in abeyance an investigation of its own deferring to the police and district attorney as they investigated what could have been a crime.  Presumably, the league will now proceed with its own investigation and draw conclusions of its own where the standard may be different from “prove beyond a reasonable doubt.”  MLB has a policy regarding domestic violence/sexual assault, and it gives the Commissioner the power to suspend a player accused of such behaviors even if the player is never formally charged or convicted of the charges.  Given that circumstance, this matter is not fully resolved.

Now I would certainly hope that the Commissioner would put any investigative action and/or any consideration of a suspension on the back burner at least until the Commissioner and his counterpart at the MLBPA find a way to get a new CBA to end the lockout.  In a sense, every major league player is “suspended” at the moment given the lockout situation; any action taken now to suspend Bauer would begin to resemble Dean Wormer’s infamous “Double Secret Probation”.

There is an added wrinkle to the MLB investigation.  The LA police investigated allegations leveled by a woman from San Diego.  There is another woman in Ohio who has also alleged sexual assault by Bauer at some time in the past.  The LA authorities did not investigate that situation for lack of jurisdiction, but it is on the table for MLB and its investigators.  I said there was a measure of positivity in this situation:

1. Trevor Bauer will not be charged – let alone be convicted – of sexual assault in Los Angeles.
2. The district attorney’s final statement is open and available for public scrutiny.

And that second point is precisely what is missing from  the other breaking story related to sexual assault in and among the world of sports.  In the past couple of days, a woman told the US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform in a “congressional roundtable” that she was sexually assaulted by Daniel Snyder – owner of the Washington Commanders.  This is an accusation over and above the smarmy level of behaving like a Peeping Tom at a cheerleaders’ photo shoot; this woman claimed that Snyder put his hand on her thigh and later tried to push her into his vehicle against her will.

[Aside: I am not sufficiently familiar with the mechanisms of the House of Representatives to tell you want a “congressional roundtable” is unless it is nothing more than a circular piece of furniture in the Capital Building.]

Recall that there has been outrage with the team and the league that previous allegations of a toxic workplace in the team’s Front Office have not produced a finding that is available for public scrutiny.  In that matter, the team set out to investigate itself until the league took over that process.  In what must be the “Tone Deaf Announcement of the Year to Date”, the Washington Commanders announced that it had hired investigators to check in on those charges.  The NFL had to step in again and make it clear that it would be the league doing the investigating in this matter and not the team investigating itself and its owner.

Here is how Commissioner Goodell explained the situation:

“I do not see any way that the team can do its own investigation of itself.  That is something we [the NFL] would do.  We would do it with an outside expert that would be able to help us come to the conclusion of what the facts were and what really, truly happened so that we can make the right decision from there.”

Naturally, someone wanted to know if there would be a “written report” that would be made available at the end of this new investigation given that there was no such thing at the end of the prior league investigation.  Without going through the meandering answer to that question, the bottom line is that the Commissioner did not say there would be such a report for public consumption, and he did not rule out the possibility either.  My suggestion here is:

• Don’t hold your breath.

The fact is that both the “Bauer situation” and the “Snyder conundrum” are not going away.  Bauer may or may not be charged in the “Ohio incident” just as he may or may not be suspended by MLB.  However, he has two more years on his contract with the Dodgers so it is reasonable to expect that he will be playing major league baseball somewhere down the road.  Snyder owns an NFL team, and it would take some monumental finding of criminality here to concoct a scenario where the NFL “rids itself” of Daniel Snyder.  Like Trevor Bauer, it is reasonable to expect that we will continue to hear from and about Daniel Snyder in the future.

Finally, since everything today revolves around sex, let me close with observations about sex from two commentators:

“Is sex dirty?  Only if it’s done right.”  [Woody Allen]

And …

“Why should we take advice on sex from the Pope?  If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t.”  [George Bernard Shaw]

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

 

 

Soon after posting yesterday’s rant, I saw a report that the Texans had hired Lovie Smith to be their new coach.  My first reaction was that it was extremely convenient that the team chose to hire a Black head coach considering Brian Flores’ lawsuit against the league and three individual teams.  And then I read the following statement from Flores’ lawyers:

“Mr. Flores is happy to hear that the Texans have hired a Black head coach, Lovie Smith, as Mr. Flores’ goal in bringing his case is to provide real opportunities for Black and minority candidates to be considered for coaching and executive positions within the NFL.  However, we would be remiss not to mention that Mr. Flores was one of three finalists for the Texans’ head coach position and, after a great interview and mutual interest, it is obvious that the only reason Mr. Flores was not selected was his decision to stand up against racial inequality across the NFL.”

Let me simply say that what is obvious to Flores’ lawyers is not necessarily so obvious to me.  Lovie Smith had a bad coaching stretch at the University of Illinois from 2016 through 2020  and he was part of the coaching staff for the Texans who were less than fully successful in 2021.  Having said that, Lovie Smith’s overall NFL record is above .500 (89-87-0); his teams have been to the playoffs three times and to the Super Bowl once.  No offense to Brian Flores but he has none of those accomplishments on his résumé.

[Aside:  I give Lovie Smith bonus “style points” for getting to the Super Bowl game with Rex Grossman as his QB.  I give him a  pass for losing that Super Bowl game to the Colts and Peyton Manning.]

Now, do I think Lovie Smith is going to be successful next season with the Texans?  Absolutely not.  The Texans need a total rebuild and they continue to have the Deshaun Watson mess on their hands.  I doubt that a reincarnated Vince Lombardi would do much with the Texans’ squad over the next couple of years.

Next up … I ran across a summary of the points covered in the standard contract that players will sign if they want to be part of the rebooted USFL.  Recall that the initial dispersal of player for that league will take place later this month.  Here are a few of the high points:

• Players sign a contract with the league, not with individual teams; and the salary structure is formulaic.
• Players earn $600 a week in mini-camp and training camp.
• Active players for regular season games earn $4500 per game.  [The league plans a 10-game regular season.]
• Roster players not active for a regular season game earn $1500.
• Players on teams that win a regular season game get a bonus of $850.
• Players on the team winning the USFL Championship Game get a bonus of $10,000.
• Player contracts run through December 31, 2022, and the USFL has the option to extend the contract for 1 year through December 31, 2023.
• USFL players will be released from their contract if they are signed by an NFL team – – and only an NFL team.  With the potential appearance of XFL 3.0 on the calendar for 2023, the USFL wants to avoid having their rosters raided by that league.  The same goes for the CFL; at the same time, this is a nod to the NFL that the USFL is not seeking an antagonistic relationship with the NFL.
• Players who sign the USFL standard contract become eligible for online college classes and degree credits at Strayer University and Capella University.
• Players who sign the USFL standard contract sign away their name, image and likeness rights to the USFL for merchandizing and promotional activities.

I found that structure interesting on several levels.  Players are not going to get rich playing in the USFL at the beginning.  For the foreseeable future, only players who attract attention from an NFL team such that they get an NFL contract will make “big bucks”.  However, players who avail themselves of the college courses offered for free could set themselves up for bigger earnings once the player’s football career/aspirations are in the past.  In addition, players get enrolled in a group health insurance plan for the duration of their USFL contract.

There was one specific thing in the report I read that I found interesting.  The USFL has a Players’ Handbook that spells out things like the league’s drug policy and its PED policy and its player conduct policy.  In that Players’ Handbook, it says explicitly that players are required to stand for the National Anthem at the games.

One other football-related note today… Titans’ wide receiver, AJ Brown, said that he was contemplating a baseball career in addition to his NFL career.  Brown once caught the attention of the San Diego Padres scouting staff and he was a two-sport athlete in high school.  Brown said that he would do better in baseball than Michael Jordan did.

• Memo to AJ Brown:  Set the bar a bit higher, my man.  Michael Jordan spent 1 year in AA minor league baseball and hit .202.

If AJ Brown said he would do better at baseball than either Deion Sanders or Bo Jackson did as two-sport athletes, he would get plenty of MLB attention.

Finally, here is a comment from humorist Brad Dickson regarding TV coverage of some Winter Olympics events:

“The best job in the world is figure skating announcer. You can just make it up. ‘She did a triple Lutz and is now going into a reverse Rupaul. Oh! It’s a quadruple Ed Asner!’”

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

 

 

In light of Brian Flores’ lawsuit against the NFL and three of its teams alleging racism in the hiring processes inside the league, the Rooney Rule has come under scrutiny once again.  I am on record for the last 20 years or so saying that the rule is well intentioned and one that would not be remotely necessary in a more perfect world.  At the same time, the rule is far too easily obeyed in fact while being evaded in spirit.  And most importantly, the Rooney Rule has no teeth; if a team or an owner flaunts the rule, the penalty might be a “million dollar fine” that owners can pay out of petty cash.

A recent addendum to the Rooney Rule came into play this week when the Dolphins hired Mike McDaniel to be their head coach.  McDaniel had been the offensive coordinator of the Niners and McDaniel is biracial.  The Niners are being rewarded for hiring/promoting a minority individual to a coordinator position that was the springboard for that individual to obtain a head coaching position.  The Niners will receive a third-round draft pick this year and another third-round draft pick next year; I don’t know if it is proper to call those picks “compensatory picks” or “reward picks”.  This is an attempt by the NFL to incentivize adding minority individuals to the pipeline that eventually turns out the 32 men who occupy head coaching positions at any given moment.

Yesterday, Jason LaCanfora posted an opinion piece on CBSSports.com saying that perhaps what the Rooney Rule really needs is meaningful punishment for teams that violate the rule with things like sham interviews.  Here is the start of that column:

“The overriding principle driving the Rooney Rule has been that if you incentivize diversity sufficiently, then the hierarchy of the NFL will begin to more closely resemble society at large.

“But what if that theory is flawed?

“What if it is proven to be naïve? What if it’s actually having the opposite effect on the hiring process?

“What if the expanded Rooney Rule is merely creating more interview opportunities, but the outcome of these searches is becoming increasingly one-sided in favor of white candidates than ever before?”

You can find the entire column here; it is worth reading because it makes the case that what exists now needs alteration/repair.  It is easy to say that there need to be consequences for violating the rule and maybe it is too easy to align oneself with that idea.

The difficulty here is that the Rooney Rule seeks to regulate intent.  The rule is procedural; a club with a vacancy at certain levels of  a team’s hierarchy must interview at least one and often two minority candidates for that vacancy.  That is not exactly a high bar to cross for a hiring official – particularly one who has already made up his mind who he wants to hire before any interviewing takes place.  Complying with the letter of the rule is almost trivial if the hiring official wants to skirt the intent of the rule which is to give minority candidates a fair shot at vacant positions.

It is easy to award added draft picks to teams as noted above because the end result is transparent.  It is rarely if ever transparent when one tries to measure or regulate intent.  I often say here that I cannot read minds; well, neither can any person or group of persons who might be tasked to be the watchdog for “interviewing intent”.  In theory, Jason LaCanfora is onto something; there need to be punishments as well as rewards in this arena.  However, I would not want to be the person who has to make the punishment call.

One more thing about the media coverage of this year’s NFL coaching carousel needs a comment.  Most commentators focus on the fact that until Mike McDaniel was hired, there was only one Black head coach in the NFL (Mike Tomlin).  That is correct but it is incomplete because the Rooney Rule specifies the need to interview minority candidates not just Black candidates.  To that end, the hiring of McDaniel in Miami brings the minority coaching list up to four.  While that may or may not be the level that commentators believe is ideal, four minority coaches are significantly better than one or two.  [The two non-Black minority coaches are Ron Rivera and Robert Saleh.]

I want to offer a different approach that might be used in addition to a more transparent application of the Rooney Rule to put more minority candidates in the head coaching pipeline.  The entry level positions in the coaching business are graduate assistants at the college level and minimum-wage-at-best interns with NFL teams.  That is where people who want to be football coaches get their start.  That career decision usually gets made soon after college and my sense is that some minority candidates find themselves in economic circumstances that do not allow them to take either sort of entry level job because they need a higher paying job.

Restricted flow of minorities into entry level positions must influence the numbers and ratios of minority coaching candidates at various levels of maturation as the years pass.  So, perhaps the NFL should invest some money in the form of stipends to minority individuals who want to take one of those entry level coaching positions such that the stipend makes the economic circumstances for minority candidates something more manageable.  Let me be clear; this will NOT be a magic wand that will resolve this issue in a year or even a decade.  What such a program MIGHT do is make the Rooney Rule obsolete some day – – on the assumption that NFL owners are not inherently incorrigible racists.

Just a thought…

Finally, Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle had this reaction to the new name attached to the Washington NFL franchise – – the Commanders:

“A Commander? To some old-timers, reader Kevin Love reminds us, a Commander is a Philip Morris cigarette back in the 1960s. The TV commercial jingle was, ‘Have a Commander, welcome aboard!’ Selling point: A special vacuum ‘gently cleans every bit of tobacco.’ You still got lung cancer, but it was a tidy lung cancer. And when you checked into the hospital, they welcomed you aboard.”

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

 

 

Pitchers and catchers were supposed to report to Spring Training camps on the 15^th or 16^th of February this year; given the state of the negotiations regarding a new CBA, that looks to be an impossibility – – even if all the teams have gone to the effort to transport all the “stuff” needed to hold Spring Training to the venues where it should be taking place.  Based on various reporting, here is my understanding of where the negotiations have gotten to:

• One of the so-called “core economic issues” relates to young players known as “Super Two” players.  Such players have more than two but less than three years of credited service time in the major leagues and some – not all – of those players can qualify for arbitration even with shorter service time than is normal.  The issue at hand is a pool of bonus money that could be  used to increase salaries for some “Super Two” players without resorting to arbitration.  The amount of money in the pool is obviously a bone of contention and there seems to be no clear agreement as to how the bonus pool might be allocated among eligible players.  One report on the gulf that exists here as to the size of this bonus pool said that the owners proposed a $10M pool and the players suggested a $105M pool.  This could take a while…
• Service time manipulation – the practice of MLB teams to keep players in the minor leagues just long enough that they do not accumulate a full year of service time in the majors so that their free agency date is postponed a full season – is also a sticking point.  MLB has proposed giving bonus draft picks to teams that do not manipulate service time.  While that sounds like a fig leaf to me, I must admit that I do not have a better idea.
• MLB wants to expand the playoffs to 14 teams – an idea I think is a bad one.  The union opposes that seemingly only because it is a bargaining chip for them to try to pry a concession from owners elsewhere in the CBA.  If that were not the case, I do not see how or why the union would want to have fewer of its players in the playoffs where more players can qualify for bonuses in their contracts for making the playoffs.
• The universal DH is also an issue.  Feh!
• Naturally, the union wants the minimum salary for players increased and the owners want to increase it to a much lesser extent.  No surprise there…
• There is reported to be a “significant gap” in the payroll threshold after which teams pay the “luxury tax”.  This is important because luxury tax money is shared with “small market teams” and the union’s position is that some of those teams are pocketing the money and not using it to try to sign players to market value contracts.
• There is also contention over another revenue sharing practice in place where local TV and radio revenues for the teams are pooled and shared nominally to give the small market teams a stronger footing in bidding for free agent players.  The issue here is that some teams never do seem to use that money in that way.

The owners are meeting this week in Orlando, FL; presumably, the negotiation team will bring the “plenary session” of the owners’ meeting up to date on all these issues – – and others that are interwoven in the fabric of the talks.  Commissioner Rob Manfred is scheduled to hold a news conference on Thursday of this week; perhaps the best we can hope for is that he sheds more light than heat on what is going on here.

One of the major problems I have had with baseball’s CBA negotiations over the years is that the fundamental issues never seem to change very much.  The two sides fulminate at each other and eventually come to a sort of agreement that merely puts a band-aid on the wound and leaves in place all the fundamental disagreements.  Then, five years later, they go into the memory banks and drag out the old issues and begin fulminating again.  This time around, the two sides – – and I mean BOTH sides – – seem to have chosen to play the game of chicken very close to some real calendar imperatives.

If the start of Spring Training is delayed, that probably also delays the start of Spring Training games.

• If Spring Training games are started significantly later than scheduled (Feb.26^th is on the books now) that could delay the start of the regular season.
• Now imagine a late start in April combined with “expanded playoffs” and the choice becomes a shorter regular season or World Series games bumping up against Thanksgiving.
• And if the regular season has to be shortened, that will add another “economic issue” to the negotiations – – how will player contracts be paid out or pro-rated…

This situation is a stone-cold mess.  And the two sides here need to take a moment for introspection and reflection on the fact that the truncated 2020 season should have demonstrated to them that fans can live without baseball.  There was plenty of turmoil in in the US in 2020 and none of that turmoil was in response to the absence of baseball until July.

Let me return to a fundamental theme I have offered here in the past.  MLB and the MLBPA should be much less antagonistic to each other than they are now – – and have been for the last 40 years.  The two sides are, in reality, partners – not opponents – in producing and distributing a “television series”.  The reason top players are routinely making $30M a year or more is TV network money; it is not the marketing genius of the owners, and it is not the athletic genius of the players; it is both working in concert.  That sort of camaraderie never seems to surface…

Finally, since today’s rant has focused on reporting about the two sides in a labor negotiation, let me close with this observation by humorist, H. Allen Smith, that should provide you with a guide as to how to read such reporting:

“When there are two conflicting versions of the story, the wise course is to believe the one in which people appear at their worst.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports