Major Challenges Facing MLB

Yesterday, I said I wanted to enumerate some of the serious challenges that face MLB as a whole.  I believe the challenges here are more severe than many reporters in and around baseball seem to think.  I am not happy to take such a position because baseball is such a relaxing and enjoyable way to spend a summer evening.  So, let me begin this morning by addressing what seem to be two contradictory facts:

  1. Up until the pandemic year of 2020, gross revenues for MLB had never been higher.
  2. Baseball is not nearly as popular with the general public as it used to be.

Up until about the 1960s, the two most prized assignments in the sports departments for major newspapers in the US were the baseball beat and the horseracing beat.  Probably third on the list of desirability was the boxing beat.  Horseracing and boxing do not even merit having regular beat writers at most newspapers in 2021; major papers still have baseball beat writers – – but they are not necessarily the envy of everyone on the sports staff.  What was America’s national pastime is now a popular but not dominant sporting enterprise.

The reasons behind the record levels of revenue come from different aspects of society in 2021 as opposed to 1955:

  • The economy today is much larger than it was in the 1950s, so the simple fact is that there is more money around for MLB to harvest from its fans.
  • A corollary of that expanded economy is that many more people have much more discretionary income and some will opt to spend a portion of that on baseball games.
  • Television money for baseball telecast rights in 2021 is thousands of times larger than it was in the 1950s.
  • Transportation access to stadiums is now available to a much larger geographic footprint than it was in the 1950s leading to more fans putting their fannies in MLB stadium seats.

Those economic factors look good and it is fair to point out that so long as the economy remains strong, the economics of baseball should be hunky-dory.  Except, there is a fly in that ointment:

  • MLB fans “skew old”.  It is an aging fanbase; the average age of rabid baseball fans is significantly over 50 years old according to survey data.
  • People who are 50 and above tend to have stable incomes so they are in a position to spend their discretionary income on what they like; old people like baseball…
  • People who are 50 and above also tend to die at a higher rate than people in their 20s and 30s.  If you doubt that assertion, go ask the actuaries at any insurance company for verification.

MLB is losing its most avid fans to Father Time, but it is not replenishing them at the same rate with younger fans who will be around longer.  The fact that the average age of the serious baseball fans continues to increase while there has been a slow – but steady – decline in live attendance for the last 7-10 years should not be shocking.  Those two “trends” are closely related.  The fact of the robust gross revenue for MLB probably gave owners – – and players – – reason to dismiss to a large extent the issues related to the shrinking fanbase and the diminution of the stature of baseball in society.  Then an interesting juxtaposition arrived:

  1. The 2020 pandemic caused a huge revenue drop for all teams.  Let me do some small math here.  For a team that averages 25,000 fans per game and hosts 81 home games, where ticket prices average only $40 and each fan only spends $25 once in the stadium on food/drink/merchandise, the total revenue flow there is $131.6M.  For many teams, that revenue flow was reduced to a trickle in 2020.
  2. The current CBA expires at the end of the 2021 season and there will need to be negotiations that will ultimately arrive at a new one.

MLB and the MLBPA had a relationship in the 1970s and 80s that made the Hatfields and the McCoys look like BFFs.  Every time there was the opportunity for either a work stoppage or litigation, that is precisely what happened.  That era of rancor culminated in 1994 when the MLBPA chose to go on strike in mid-August after about 115 games had been played; the two sides could not come to an agreement in time for there to be a World Series that year and it took an injunctive ruling by now Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor in March 1995 to get the owners and the players to agree on a new CBA.  That 1994/95 experience should be instructive to owners and players now – – but it seems not to be.

Since 1995, there has been “labor peace” in baseball AND it has been in the same time period where gross revenues for baseball have increased most dramatically.  Those two facts are not related by direct cause and effect but the fact that for 25 years the storylines for baseball have been about players on the field as opposed to players off the field has focused fan interest on issues that can produce revenue for the sport.  Players like to say that no one goes to the park to see the owners; that is absolutely true – – as is the statement that no one goes to the park to see the players in street clothes outside the park not playing baseball.

The other aspect of the 1994/95 feud was that it took MLB several years before the “fans came back” and more than a couple of baseball historians believe that it was not until 1998 when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire staged their “home run race” that fan interest in baseball “returned to normal”.  The pandemic-reduced 2020 season caused a significantly diminished interest in baseball all by itself; the game does not need a work stoppage in 2021 to magnify that reduction in interest.

The icing on this cake is not pretty.  Right about now, the owners and the union seem unable to agree on anything.  As I pointed out yesterday, the two sides could not bring themselves to be on the same conference call with Federal health officials to learn the latest info on COVID-19 and on effective protocols for baseball to use to have a season run its course with minimal health-related incidents.  The two sides chose to have separate calls with those officials.  How encouraging.

And those are just the short-term challenges for MLB and the MLBPA…  There are systemic problems too and those are going to be much more difficult to resolve.  The current pissing contest can fade into history – the same way middle school feuds do – but the systemic problems are going to remain until they are addressed.

One big problem is “analytics”.  I should say more precisely that it is the “over-reliance on analytics” that is the problem, and that over-reliance affects fans and players and owners.

  • Analytics has produced “The Shift”.  What “The Shift” has done is to reduce the number of base runners which reduces the “excitement” in the games.
  • Because it is more difficult to get a hit against “The Shift”, one adaptation by hitters is to alter their swing to change the “launch angle” thereby hitting the ball over the shift – – and hopefully over the fence too.  That produces more home runs, and it produces more strikeouts, but it does not produce more excitement.
  • Analytics has already had – and will almost assuredly continue to have – a negative effect on the pocketbooks of lots of players.  Recall when Albert Pujols got his 10-year mega-contract at age 31 or 32; that is not likely to happen anymore because analytics says that such deals are a waste of lots of money for the tail-end years of that kind of contract and that money can better be spent on players who will be productive in those years.  Long-range guaranteed contracts for players in their early/mid 30s are going the way of the dinosaur.  I cannot wait to hear the union cry “collusion” here…

So, in the current environment when the league and the union will not participate in the same conference call, what do you think of the chances that the two sides could even begin to have a meaningful discussion of issues such as the above.  But wait; there’s more:

  • The aging fanbase is dying off and is not being replenished with young-uns in part because the games are too long, and the pace of play is too slow for “millennials”.  When I was growing up, a game taking 2 hours and 30 minutes was commonplace; many were shorter than that.  Today, it is the 3-hour game that is commonplace; that is the length of an NFL game – – but there is a lot more excitement and action in an NFL game than there is in today’s MLB games.
  • Attempts to increase pace of play have been cosmetic at best and have been universally ineffective.  Waving the batter to first place in lieu of an intentional walk is cosmetic at best; making relief pitchers face at least 3 batters before they can be relieved saves an in-game change a few times a week.  Ho hum …
  • [Aside: Maybe the way to have fewer in-game pitching changes is to limit the number of pitchers a team can use in a 9-inning game?  Every in-game pitching change takes about 3 minutes to happen and for the fans it is dead time.]
  • Meanwhile, the time between innings has not been addressed; today it is always more than 2 minutes – – and sometimes it is 3 minutes.
  • And the Holy Grail of “getting the calls right” – – so-called instant replay – – produces plenty of dead time every game.  On every close play, managers and players stall for time until the manager can get a sign from his electronic replay wizards telling him if he should challenge the call or not.  When he chooses to do so, the mechanics used by the umpires to do the review is only slightly less cumbersome than working a UN resolution through the General Assembly and the Security Council.  Meanwhile, the fans in the stands and the fans at home are stuck watching a conference call.  Try to manage the excitement there; you would not want to induce any heart attacks…
  • MLB reduced the number of minor league teams around the country by about 25% for this year.  That will save owners some money which is a good thing at a time when revenue has dropped.  However, what does that do to further the objective of growing the game by getting kids interested in and fascinated by the game itself?

I do not know either Rob Manfred – – The Commish – – or Tony Clark – – the MLBPA Executive Director.  What seems apparent to me is that neither gentleman has much time nor use for the other one.  Maybe – I said MAYBE – that chilly relationship comes from the fact that The Commish used to be the chief labor negotiator for MLB and the MLBPA Exec Director has been part of the union doing negotiations with MLB for about the last 10 years.  Whatever is the source of their “lack of camaraderie”, it would be best for fans and for “The Game” if they found a way to get past it quickly.  Good luck with that one too…

Here are some fundamental truths about what faces MLB and the MLBPA:

  • The sport needs to make itself into a better TV entertainment product.  To achieve this end, there will need to be cooperation among the owners, players, umpires and “broadcast partners”.  If there is any momentum pulling those forces together now, it is opaque to me.  Notwithstanding the lack of cooperation here, this should be Priority Number One for owners and players because this is the source of the “big money” that flows into the game that drives profits for owners and contracts for players.
  • The sport needs to make itself a more “fan-friendly stadium event”.  Attracting new fans – who will bring “new money” with them to the park – is not going to happen easily if the product is a three-and-a-half-hour game with only 20 minutes of “action” that costs a couple of hundred dollars.  The same four forces needed to accomplish an improvement for TV need to be involved here too …
  • The sport needs added competitive balance.  Consider that the LA Dodgers have two players signed for 2021 – – David Price and Trevor Bauer – – who will make $60M this year between the two of them.  The Cleveland Indians and the Pittsburgh Pirates have a projected 26-man opening day roster that will make less than $50M in total.  The projected Dodgers’ opening day roster would make $250.2M this year.  There needs to be a way to bring a semblance of balance to the talent levels on the various teams.  I know; there have always been talent-rich and talent-poor teams, but this is getting ridiculous.  Why would a young fan in Pittsburgh or Cleveland develop a deep and abiding interest in the local team when it surely looks as if the team is not even trying to be competitive.  [Aside:  And yes, I also remember those spunky Tampa Bay Rays and how they win pennants once a decade or so and the Oakland A’s who “thrive” on Moneyball.  They make for nice feelgood stories, but they do not attract a rabid fanbase; in fact, they do not attract much of a fanbase at all.]

I am not suggesting – let alone predicting – that MLB is about to crash and burn without a new CBA that makes drastic changes to the game immediately.  There are still plenty of baseball fans – me included – to sustain the leagues.  I am suggesting, however, that baseball has lost its dominant role in the US sports cosmos already and that it could well continue its downward trajectory without changes.  MLB needs changes on the field and off the field and the changes need not happen drastically.  But there must be a commitment to making changes that intend to improve the game as a product.  Baseball needs better rules and better marketing.

  • The NFL markets the idea of “On any given Sunday …”
  • The NBA markets its star players.
  • MLB markets its history.

Well, if you are marketing your history and your fanbase is dying off without an equal influx of new fans, think about the logical consequences there.  Baseball owners and players should heed this entry in The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“History:  A cumulative account of the ways a bunch of dead people have screwed up in exactly the same ways we are screwing up right now.”

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

 

 

Pitchers And Catchers Reporting …

I have no intention of going all meteorological on  you today, but here in the DC area we got some freezing rain/ice as precipitation about 3:00 AM last night; it is continuing in that mode as I write this and then some snow is forecast on top of that frozen mess for the rest of the day.  The sky is fully covered in clouds at about 1000 feet of elevation.  If ever a day oozed “dreariness”, it would be today in the DC area.

Nonetheless, there is a way for me to look over, under around and through this mess to see something much more pleasant and alluring.  No, I am not auditioning for the male lead in a remake of the silent movie, Little Mary Sunshine; I am simply acknowledging that this is the time of year when pitchers and catchers begin to report to Spring Training sites.  That means baseball is coming and baseball means this sort of dreary weather is on the wane.

That good news is compounded by the fact that Spring Training is going to happen “on time” this year.  It was not long ago that there was some doubt about the timing there; MLB wanted to delay the opening of Spring Training camps for about a month for “pandemic-related” reasons; the players’ union refused to accept that, and the legalese of the CBA resolved that head-butting exercise.  And in that last phrase, you can find the germ of future strife in this dimension.

Lest you think I am being dramatic, consider this one seemingly minor episode:

  • About two weeks ago, MLB scheduled a call with Federal officials to get the latest information and projections about COVID-19 and its spread and vaccine availability and reasonable protocols and – – you get the idea.
  • The players’ union was invited to participate in the call.
  • The union refused and set up a call of its own with Federal officials on the same subjects.

Recall that the current CBA expires after this season concludes and there needs to be cooperation to get to a new CBA.  Just reviewing the behaviors with regard to gathering COVID-19 related information from Federal officials, I would say these sides are behaving more like middle school kids involved in a feud than they are rational adults.  What baseball as a sport needs here is pragmatism – – and if there is any of that stuff lying around in the sport, it is surely keeping a low profile.

The so-called “elephant in the room” for MLB is that there are some systemic problems in the game that threaten the economic foundations of the game itself.  Those systemic problems may create bad news and rougher times for the billionaire owners and for the millionaire players.  Moreover, the best way to exacerbate those systemic problems is for the owners and the players to continue to turn marginally important issues into the latter-day equivalent of Custer’s Last Stand.

The 2021 season will be 162 games long – – assuming no massive return of COVID-19 between now and October.  When there are doubleheaders, the games will be 7 innings long and the “runner on second” to start extra innings will return for an encore.  [Aside:  For the record, I do not like either rule but their inclusion in the 2021 season is not sufficiently horrible that I would oppose them to the death.]  In addition, the DH will only be applicable for AL games or interleague games in AL parks.  MLB offered to keep the universal DH in place for 2021 in exchange for the union’s agreement to continue the expanded playoffs from last year.  When the union refused to agree to that, MLB took the universal DH off the table.  [Aside:  For the record, I hate the DH and I hate expanding the playoffs as MLB did last year.  Nonetheless, the absence of an ability to find a way to agree to compromise here is something I hate even more.]

According to an AP report:

“The agreement (on how to conduct the 2021 season) includes more sophisticated contact tracing for COVID-19 that includes the use of technology, and more league rules on behavior to comply with coronavirus protocols.”

Pardon me for a moment of pessimism here; but given the lack of collegiality that exists between the owners and players now, I cannot help but think that “more league rules on behavior to comply with coronavirus protocols” just might spark some more ill will between now and the end of October.

There is going to be a fundamental difference in the conduct of Spring Training this year.  In previous years, teams would have a training camp for its most likely major leaguers and a separate camp of its minor league prospects.  Occasionally, one of the hot minor league prospects would be brought into the major league camp for a game or two to “check him out” against major league competition.  This year, the major league training camps can be as large as 75 players meaning the distinctions between the major camp and the minor camp can be blurred significantly.

That blurring will mean that teams will need to carefully manage the playing time available to young players and to veterans hoping to make a team as a utility player of a bench presence.  While it can be argued that such vigilance was always important, it takes on greater significance this year because of what happened last year.  There was no minor league baseball season last year; teams did not get to see their prospects wax or wane in 2020; the “book” on most minor league prospects has its most recent entries written in invisible ink.

The good news is that pitchers and catchers are reporting; that is a harbinger of Spring; I can think about that as I watch more freezing rain fall from the sky this morning.  The bad news is that baseball is not in a good labor/management place today and the document that keeps them from going at it tooth and nail expires in about 9 months.

Tomorrow, I will try to explain what I mean by “systemic problems” that threaten baseball for fans, owners and players.  Until then, let me close with a description of another annual Spring event from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Spring Break:  A week-long bacchanal that makes the reign of Caligula look like a scrapbooking party at the Red Hat Society.”

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

 

 

Some Are Predicting A Disaster…

More than a handful of sports observers have commented on a looming potential disaster for women’s sports at the collegiate – – and possibly at the high school – – level(s).  Predicting dark days ahead for women’s sports is not something novel for 2021; what is different this time around is the identified source of the threat:

  • An Executive Order signed by President Biden on the day of his inauguration.

The Executive Order in question declares that “laws that prohibit sex discrimination … covers discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.”  One of the laws specifically cited in that Executive Order is Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.  Title IX creates the relatively level economic playing field for women’s sports by denying institutions the ability to use any sort of “revenue proportionality” calculation to allot funds for women’s sports.

The Executive Order here intends to bar discrimination for the LGBTQ segment of society.  Let me say simply and clearly that I support any action that removes discrimination for every segment of society that is not performance based or scientifically impossible.  I have no problem with “gay marriage”; I have no problem with “same sex couples adopting children”; I would prefer not to have females use the same public restrooms that I do, but I will not go on any crusade to stop that from happening; I do have problems with any sorts of laws or regulations or even social customs that alienate individuals on the basis of their gender or their sexual preference(s).  Having said that, some folks believe that President Biden’s Executive Order could be disastrous for women’s sports.

Here’s how:

  • If “gender identity” is absolutely protected against discrimination, then a biological male can “gender identify as a female” – either permanently or merely conveniently – and be eligible to compete against females in athletic competitions.

Rather than make a universal statement here that would get me labeled as a chauvinist troglodyte, let me say that male athletes who would likely not be “championship material” competing against other elite male athletes could likely be dominant in competitions against female athletes.

  • The male who runs 10th in the Olympic 100-meter dash would be a force majeure in a sprint of the same distance with only female opponents.
  • The male sitting at the end of any NBA bench who gets to play only in epic blowout games would likely dominate the WNBA.
  • Top level females would be hard pressed to beat good-but-not-championship-caliber males in virtually all the field events at a track meet.

My point here is that – – if you extrapolate all of this to a logical and negative end point – – women’s sports could become dominated by males who “gender identify” as females.  And that situation might not be a good end point for women’s athletics.

Can it happen?  Well, evidently there are at least two of the States whose legislatures believe it can happen and those legislatures in Mississippi and North Dakota are in the process of passing bills requiring participation in sports there to be solely based on the gender assigned at birth.  So, that would seem to settle all of this; consider that as “problem solved”.  Except that would set up the situation where a State Law could conflict directly with a Presidential Executive Order.  Such conflicts get resolved in courts and in various legislative bodies – – and that is not the kind of “publicity” that women’s sports needs.

Obviously, the most malignant outcome here for women’s sports is some nightmarish twist wherein the Executive Order is deemed to have overreached AND that Title IX itself is somehow unconstitutional.    The gloom-and-doom prognosticators here would be proven right under that scenario; women’s sports would be gutted in that circumstance.  But the only way for that to happen is for this to go to court in the first place and setting up a potential conflict between an Executive Order and State Law is one way to do that.

I think the gloom-and-doomsayers are well ahead of themselves at this point.  Here is a link to the Executive Order in question in case you want to read it and make your own interpretation.

Moving on …  there is no real women’s equivalent to college football, so this is a total break in focus here.  Nick Saban was on Rich Eisen’s show recently and was asked about the possibility of expansion of the CFP.  Moreover, Saban was asked if he was in favor of such expansion.

Nick Saban has been around the block enough times not to answer that sort of question directly but still to offer an answer that touches on the central portion of the question.  What he did here was to express his concerns about the secondary effects of expanding the CFP:

“I just wonder sometimes if having a playoff and bowl games, and that was the unique thing about bowl games in college football, a lot of players got self-gratification for having good seasons.  They got to go to a bowl game, their families, the program, everything sort of got some positive self-gratification of what they were able to accomplish even though they weren’t national championship caliber or playoff caliber.  Now that’s all been diminished a bit. You just wonder, can playoff and bowl games co-exist, or should we just have more teams in the playoff? I’m not saying I’m for it or against it. I think that’s the question people need to answer.”

That statement brings home to me the glass half full versus half empty perception:

  • I see most of the “minor bowl games” as useless spectacles.
  • Nick Saban sees them as a reward for good-but-not-great teams.
  • Po – TAY – toe … Po – TAH – toe.

Finally, apropos of exactly nothing, here is a Tweet from Brad Dickson formerly of the Omaha World Herald:

“I asked my 4-year-old nephew what he plans to do for a living. He says, ‘I want to shave goats.’ Me: ‘Good. I was afraid you wanted to be a writer.’”

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

 

 

Serious Business Today?

The Houston Texans released JJ Watt over the weekend.  Granted, Watt is entering that window of time when many – – if not most – – defensive linemen become measurably less effective.  Having said that, JJ Watt is also THE best defensive player in the history of the Houston Texans and JJ Watt had a more than respectable season in 2020 even if it was not comparable to those years when he was the Defensive Player of the Year in the NFL.  Reports say that Watt asked for his release and the Texans agreed to give that to him; assuming that is the case, here are three ways it may have happened:

  1. The Texans wanted to have JJ Watt end his relationship with the team in the best possible light – – and this exit ramp is certainly better than other potential ruptures.
  2. The Texans realized that releasing him would incur no “dead cap money” for 2021 and would save them his salary of $17.5M against their 2021 cap.
  3. The Texans did not think they could get anything of value for Watt on the trade market.

Of course, it could also be an admixture of any pair or all three of the above … but the bottom line is that the Houston Texans have now lost another high-quality player and have gotten bupkes in return.  Ad JJ Watt to this list:

  • Jedeveon Clowney
  • DeAndre Hopkins
  • Deshaun Watson – – potentially

I do not pretend to be able to read minds – – but given the actions of the Texans’ personnel wizards as evidenced by the above, I would not want to have the power to read those minds.  I prefer to reside is a far more rational region of space, and in a rational space, JJ Watt could have brought at least a draft pick or two back to the Texans as part of an exchange – – and the team needs draft picks given the way they have squandered them in past dealings.

Speculation about where Watt might sign immediately focused on the Steelers because his two younger brothers – – TJ Watt and Derek Watt – – are on the Steelers’ roster.  Since I do not read minds, I have no idea if that situation is appealing or repulsive to JJ Watt but if he is going to be “chasing a ring” with his next team, perhaps he might think about signing with the Packers – – as a native of the State of Wisconsin – – or the Ravens.  Wherever he signs, he will have absented himself from the drama and the vaudeville that is the Houston Texans’ organization; that change of pace for him would have to be a plus for him.

Dwight Perry “analyzed” the release of JJ Watt like this in the Seattle Times over the weekend:

“Those wild and crazy Houston Texans agreed to release star pass-rusher J.J. Watt — still under contract — instead of trying to get some return value in a trade.

“Veteran team watchers say you’d have to go back weeks — weeks — to find a Texans move this confounding.”

In another bit of NFL news that is not nearly as confounding or head-scratching as the release of JJ Watt, former NFL defensive back, “Pacman” Jones has been arrested yet again.  [Aside:  He has been arrested enough times that I suspect he can correct a police officer if the officer misstates the Miranda Warning.]  This time the arrest is for and the charge is “misdemeanor assault”.

When I read that as the charge, I figured this was no big deal; probably what Pacman had done was to get into a shouting match with someone where pushing and shoving ensued and then – – as a pro athlete – – Pacman asserted himself a bit more than his adversary and the police were called.  No big deal here; nothing to see here; move along…

Later in the report I read was the description that Pacman had punched and kicked another person in the head until that person was unconscious.  [Aside:  If that is “misdemeanor assault” in Cincinnati, I guess I do not want to know what “felonious assault” might entail.]

Pacman Jones was a Pro Bowl caliber DB in the NFL – – and was named All Pro one time – – during his career.  He was drafted by the Titans high in the first round of the NFL Draft notwithstanding the fact that he had “off-field issues” while he was in college.  Jones was indeed an on-field talent when he was available for his team; during his career, however, he was arrested and involved in “police matters” more than a handful of times and spent an entire season on suspension by the NFL for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy.

Jones’ explanation for the situation last weekend was that he was at a bar and was trying to get the DJ to play some song or songs when he heard a ruckus behind him and saw the club bouncer fighting with Jones’ younger brother.  At that point, Pacman went into action like Popeye the Sailor and according to Pacman, “I did what I needed to do.”  There are lawyers in Cincinnati drooling over the potential billable hours here…

Finally, having cited Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times above, let me close today with his assessment of potential Valentine’s Day gifts:

“Among the worst reported Valentine’s Day gifts, according to Dating.com, are wilted flowers, a pet hamster and an online workout subscription.

“Somehow not making the list: Jets season tickets.”

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

 

 

Off The Beaten Path Today …

Until I read a report last weekend about CheerSport, I was unaware that there was an annual national cheerleading competition.  Well, there is.  And it was in Atlanta GA last weekend drawing “40,000 people from across the country.”  I might suggest a motto for the organizers here and the participants:

  • “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor a pandemic stays these cheerers from their appointed routines…”
  • [Apologies to US Postal workers here…]

Participation is “significantly smaller this year” according to the organizers; only about 800 teams from around the country will compete.  Naturally, the organizers assert that they have strict and thorough health and safety standards in place and that they will be enforced.  I hope they are right because if they are wrong, this could be super-spreader event.

The danger of viral spread in, around and during the competition may be manageable with some precautions that are in place:

  • Teams will perform in isolation; only the team and family members will be in the arena during a performance.
  • There will be cleaning/sanitizing between the routines of all teams.
  • Masks will be worn at all times and there is to be no “high-fiving” or “hugging” after the performance.
  • You get the idea…

However, there is the potential for community spread because in the counties around Atlanta, more than 100,000 cases of COVID-19 have been detected.  The participants and their families will need to be “out and about” in that area for some of the time to get to and from lodgings and to eat etc.  Hopefully, everyone will go home from this event virus free.

The cheerleading competition will go on and at the same time a high school basketball season had to be abandoned.  Yesterday, I got an email from a friend with a link to a story from mlive.com.  A high school in Michigan – Mio High School – has had to cancel its basketball season this year because its players have chosen to play for “travel teams” due to the uncertainty in Michigan regarding high school athletics this year.  The Michigan High School Athletic Association basketball season has not started yet but evidently “travel teams” are up and running.

The season was supposed to start on February 1st but an order from the governor put it back to “no sooner than February 21st.”  Evidently, that was enough for the players at Mio High School and their parents to “take their talents elsewhere”.  There is an irony here.

After the governor’s proclamation of no season prior to February 21st, the Michigan Dept of Health and Human Services reversed course and said the season could start on February 8th.  The problem is that kids had signed up and joined “travel teams” by then and in doing so those players were now ineligible to play on Michigan High School Athletic Association teams.

The linked story above calls Mio High School’s boys’ basketball team:

“ … the home of basketball heroes, legends and icons.   It is the home of a basketball heritage, tradition and pride.”

Even allowing for a lot of rhetorical license there, one might ask if the season was lost to the pandemic or to political/bureaucratic kabuki theater which then led parents to do something for their kids that made them ineligible to come back to their high school team.  Perhaps Alphonse and Gaston are alive and well and living in Michigan…

Another off-the-beaten-path event took place over the weekend.  FCF – – Fan Controlled Football – – made its debut and Johnny Manziel was back in action for the first time in a long time.  The last time Manziel was in a professional football game was in 2019 when he was with the Memphis Express of the briefly interesting Alliance of American Football.  Here in FCF, Manziel is part of a 4-team league that plays indoors with 7 players on a side.  His team is the Zappers, and they lost their opening encounter to the Beasts by a score of 48-44.  Manziel was 1 for 5 passing for 11 yards in the game and ran the ball 8 times for 68 yards and a TD.

After the game, Manziel said:

“The product will keep getting better as the weeks go on.  Good start even with the loss.  You know, win or lose we booze on the Zappers.”

Johnny Manziel has been out of the NFL since 2015.  I suspect that any folks at NFL HQs who heard or read that post-game statement had to feel a sense of relief that he was not representing an NFL team when he said that.

Finally, Bob Molinaro had this note in a column last week in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot.  I could not agree more that far too many writers and broadcasters have jumped the gun on the idea of “legacy” here:

“Such nonsense: Anyone who honestly thinks — as apparently some talk-show hosts pretend to — that Patrick Mahomes seriously damaged his legacy by losing a Super Bowl at age 25 a year after winning the big game, should consider adjusting their meds. And why would anybody talk about a 25-year-old athlete’s legacy?”

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

 

 

Character Counts

In case the name is not familiar to you, Jack Easterby is the Executive VP of Football Operations for the Houston Texans; his name frequently comes up in various reports about the turmoil that supposedly exists in the Texans’ front office.  I have no idea what is going on there but there was a report this week that Easterby hired Dylan Thompson to be the “character coach” for the Texans.  Several points here:

  • Easterby had been the “character coach” for the Patriots prior to his arrival in Houston.
  • Easterby hired Thompson in that role after Thompson had been the “character coach” for the Lions under Matt Patricia’s regime in Detroit.
  • That means at least 3 teams in thee NFL (Pats, Lions and Texans) have “character coaches”.
  • When I read about this personnel decision, I had no idea what a “character coach” did for a living.

A not-so-thorough bit of research revealed that one of the more specific duties for the position is to assist young players in the transition to life as a professional athlete on the field, in the locker room and in society.  That is certainly not a bad idea although I would have no clue as to how to do that should anyone ask me to give it a try.  Evidently, these are some of the skills and abilities necessary for the job:

  • Be available as a guiding counsel for players and their families when issues arise in their mental/emotional lives.
  • Facilitate communication and relationship building among players, coaches and staff thereby creating unity and harmony.

I learned three things from reading about this hiring decision by the Houston Texans:

  1. I learned that at least 3 teams have a position known as character coach.
  2. I learned – sort of – what a character coach does with a team.
  3. I learned that I would last less than 8 hours as a character coach before leaving in a dense fog.

Sticking with the NFL, in one of his interactions with the press around the time of the Super Bowl, Roger Goodell expressed his disappointment with the outcomes of the most recent hiring cycle for head coaches – – referring clearly to the fact that only one Black man was hired for seven open positions.  Specifically referring to that hiring record, he said, “It wasn’t what we expected and it’s not what we expect going forward.”

The poster child for the successful Black assistant coach who cannot seem to land a head coaching job at the moment is Eric Bieniemy, offensive coordinator for the KC Chiefs.  Everyone who pays even fleeting attention to the NFL for the past several years recognizes the success that the Chiefs have had as an offensive unit – – and yet Eric Bieniemy will be back in his same job in KC again next season.  The most common conclusion drawn for that situation is that he has not been hired because of racial prejudice in the hiring process itself.

I am confident that racial prejudice is part of the “problem” here, but I think it is too easy to pass off the problem with a declaration that it is the entirety of the “problem”.  It is almost glib to say that NFL owners are predominantly white men of European ancestry and that they hire people “who look like themselves”.  There is a glaring counterexample from the sports world to that easily arrived at answer.

Donald Sterling was forced to sell his NBA franchise and was banned from the NBA for life after his obvious and odious feelings about Black people were made indelibly clear to the public.  At the same time, Donald Sterling hired – and retained for a long time – a Black GM (Elgin Baylor) and he hired/approved the hiring of about a half-dozen Black head coaches.  A man whose public image is far more tainted with “racial prejudice” than any current NFL owner found a way to hire people who did not look like himself.  I am not trying to justify Donald Sterling nor am I trying to justify the NFL hiring decisions for new head coaches in 2021.  All I am trying to point out is that this issue is not simplistic.

Moreover, because it is not simplistic, it is not something that should lead the NFL Commissioner to say that it did not come out “as expected”.  Things can come out “as expected” under two conditions:

  1. They are well understood and have been observed many times.  Example:  Drop a pencil off a desktop and it will fall to the floor and not rise to the ceiling – – as expected.
  2. Serendipity is at work.  Many complicated and generally unnoticed factors are at work and the outcome is the result of unseen processes and interactions.  Translation:  You may think you know why it happened – – but you do not.

It is easier for folks to seize upon the first situation here because it offers the comfort of letting folks think they understand the hows and whys of a complicated situation.  That convenience and that comfort level, however, do not make the first situation above necessarily correct.

According to reports, Eric Bieniemy interviewed for the Jets’ head coaching job and for the Texans’ head coaching job.  He probably interviewed for others as well, but those two are important to note here because both the Jets and the Texans hired a minority candidate in this hiring cycle.  But they did not choose to hire Eric Bieniemy – – so how might we come to think about that situation?  Let me offer two possibilities here while acknowledging that there must be several more factors involved:

  1. Eric Bieniemy interviews terribly.  I do not know that to be the case but given his record of success as an offensive coordinator and the fact that he was interviewed for jobs where minority candidates were eventually selected reduces the impact of the “racial factor” just a bit.
  2. There is a structural flaw in the NFL’s hiring system that has disadvantaged Eric Bieniemy as compared to other minority head coaching candidates.

Let us explore that second possibility.  Bieniemy’s success means that he is employed and working full time for a team in the playoffs for up to 5 weeks after the teams with “failed coaches” have fired their incumbents and gone looking for someone to come in and “change the culture”.  Coaching candidates who were unemployed at the time the coaching searches began could have been contacted/interviewed prior to the end of the previous season.  Coaching candidates on teams that did not make the playoffs could have been interviewed the day after the season ended.  Eric Bieniemy had a full time job with the Chiefs and could not be conveniently/thoroughly interviewed until after the AFC Championship Game three weeks after the season ended.

There is some pressure for a team to hire the new coach early in the process; that new coach needs to assemble his staff and the longer he waits the greater the chance that one of the assistants he wants will have taken a job elsewhere.  So, the process itself puts someone like Eric Bieniemy at a disadvantage.

The NFL has tried to encourage the hiring of minority coaches – and specifically Black coaches – for a while now.  The Rooney Rule and the Amended Rooney Rule which offers compensatory picks to teams that groom and develop minority coaches who get head coaching jobs are well meaning.  But there is a disincentive built into the whole process and it effects assistant coaches on the more successful teams; it penalizes success.

The obvious solution is to have a new rule – – call it Rooney Rule III – – that says there will be no hiring of new head coaches in the NFL until some time after the Super Bowl game.  Teams will still be required to interview multiple minority candidates and the compensatory picks can still be in place – – although I am on record thinking that is not such a good idea, but what the heck – – and then hiring season can be declared open.  The problem here is so obvious that I hesitate to mention it,

  • Good luck trying to enforce the delay in the hiring decisions.  There will be more accidental circumstances where team officials and coaching candidates just happen to bump into one another in the month of January than can be counted.  Coaching candidates will use so many “burner phones” that cell phone manufacturers will see an uptick in sales.

What is the solution here?  Frankly, I do not know.  What I do know is that if the powers that be in the NFL – – and to a much lesser extent in the NFLPA – – continue to make hiring decisions into transactional events and if it decries outcomes after the fact instead of stating what “ought to happen” before the fact, not a whole lot is going to change.

Hold on a minute; I have an idea …  Maybe the NFL needs to hire itself a “character coach”?  It can’t hurt.

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

 

 

A Strange Mixture Today …

Yesterday, I wrote about the investigation into the sexual harassment issues alleged to have happened in the front office of the Washington Football Team about a decade ago.  By total coincidence, the headline on the lead story in the Washington Post sports section today reads:

  • “Ex-cheerleaders, team settle lewd videos case”

As is always the case, no details of the settlement were available.  That means – theoretically – that it is equally probable that the women dropped the suit because they knew they would lose in court OR that the details of events that took place back then were sufficiently skeezy that the team did not want them publicized regardless of the outcome of the case.  Of course, it could also be an admixture of those two possibilities as well.  You make the call here.

In addition, the team has decided not to have any cheerleaders at least for the moment; the team has decided to:

“… temporarily pause offseason activity of game  day programs including cheerleading and music.”

The team also demonstrated that it has not lost its grip on management-speak with the following pronouncement:

“The time is right to reimagine out entire game day experience, to reinvent it in such a way that reflects our modern identity and aligns with what today’s fan seeks.”

So, in the spirit of “reimagination” and solely with the intent of  suggesting what this fan seeks in terms of a “game day experience”, let me make two suggestions to the new leadership in the Washington Front office:

  1. Upgrade the food selections.  The status is that food at the stadium is better than “sushi at the 7-Eleven” but not a whole lot better.  I am not suggesting the team reincarnate Julia Child to oversee the food offerings, but there is a mile and a half of improvement potential here.
  2. Cut the parking fees back.  Fans should not have to tap into their personal lines of credit just to pay to park their car on game day.

About two years ago, I mentioned that there was a push to include break dancing as a demonstration sport in the 2024 Paris Olympics.  Well, that is indeed going to happen.  As with all sports involved in the Olympics, the IOC relies on international organizations to codify and regulate the sport itself.  Break dancing falls under the umbrella entity known as the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) which also intends to have ballroom dancing, salsa dancing and Lord know what other dances entered into the sports world and accepted around the world.

Based on a recent report in the Washington Post a “breaking competition” involves a “series of dance battles”:

“The dancers don’t know the music ahead of time and have to improvise on the spot.  Judges score them based on personality, technique, variety, creativity, performance and musicality.”

In other words, it is ice dancing without the ice.

The IOC is interested in attracting a young audience to maintain the allure of the Olympic Games as a television property.  Break dancing is something that “skews young” demographically; so, the acceptance of break dancing as a demonstration sport is not a huge surprise.  The fact that it will take place in the Paris Olympics is not a shock either; break dancing is very popular in France where it is evolving into a team sport and has caught the fancy of product managers in the “energy drink sector”.

Here is my guess as to my reaction to the competition in 2024:

  • I will check out break dancing because it is new and different.
  • After about 2 or 3 routines where I have been unable to discern any elemental differences in “personality” or “musicality” and I have concluded that the lines between “technique” and “performance” are opaque to me, I will move on and do something else.

Since I seem to be referring to things in the Washington Post this morning, let me point you to a column today by Sally Jenkins.  I was unaware that the NFL and a team of medical experts were working toward gathering and analyzing data about controlling the spread of COVID-19 and that all that data has been shared with the Center for Disease Control.  Moreover, the data show that the NFL managed to achieve an extremely low positivity rate over the last season – – and there are lessons to be learned.

Based on testing of about 7500 players and staff with over 950,000 tests administered, the NFL’s positivity rate for coronavirus was 0.08%; that compares to the US population at large with a positivity rate of 7%.  The difference there is a factor of 100; that is not an accident.

From the outset of the pandemic, medical folks have hailed the need for and the value of “testing and tracing”.  In addition to the 950,000 tests, the NFL also deployed contact tracing and used proximity trackers to highlight potential contacts that may not have been recalled and relayed to the tracers.

This column is worth reading because it shows what can be achieved in terms of limiting the spread of COVID-19 when a concerted and organized effort is in place to do that.  There are kudos that need to go out to the league, the league’s medical folks and the players’ union.  There is information for everyone to learn about the efficacy of various procedures to limit COVID-19 spread here.  Almost everything Sally Jenkins writes is worth reading; this one is definitely worth the time.

Finally, here is a comment from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times from a while ago regarding the addition of some “modern sports” to the Olympics:

“Skateboarding has been added to the medal events for this year’s Olympics, and break dancing will likewise be in the lineup at the 2024 Paris Games.

“Somehow not passing IOC muster: a motion to change the Olympic motto to ‘Sicker, Hipper, Gnarlier.’”

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

 

 

RIP Marty Schottenheimer

Marty Schottenheimer died on Monday after dealing with Alzheimer’s Disease for more than 5 years.  He was an NFL player and coached 4 teams (Cleveland, KC, Washington and San Diego) over a 21-year coaching career.  His teams only had 2 losing seasons in that time and his regular season record was 200-126-1.  His teams underperformed in the playoffs and Schottenheimer never made it to the Super Bowl but – ironically – coaches from his coaching tree made it there including Bruce Arians, Bill Cowher, Tony Dungy and Mike McCarthy – – all of whom won a Super Bowl game.  He ranks seventh in the NFL all time in wins as a coach and I believe he should be in the Hall of Fame.

Rest in peace, Marty Schottenheimer.

Yesterday, I received an email from Gregg Drinnan, formerly the sports editor of the Kamloops Daily News and currently the author of the Taking Note blog you can find here.  It contained a link to a report on the status of a CFL team undergoing a name change akin to the one underway here in Washington.  The Edmonton Eskimos are no more; the team joined other teams in various sports that now eschew names that have racial/ethnic overtones.  The helmet logo for the team over recent times has been a pair of the letter “E” and that seems to be driving the search for a new name.

The team sought fan input for the new name and got 2,047 suggestions.  The team has narrowed it down to a list of seven new names and it is now asking fans to rank the seven from first to worst.  Here is the list; it is a Sesame Street list brought to you by the letter “E”:

  • Eagles
  • Eclipse
  • Elements
  • Elk
  • Elkhounds
  • Evergolds
  • Evergreens

According to one report:

“The team says the group selecting the name will take the results into account after the survey concludes Sunday.”

The Elk and/or the Eagles would be the winners for me – – but I doubt that folks in Edmonton care what I think on this matter.  I do think it is interesting however that a team seemingly mesmerized by the letter “E” recently hired a new head coach named Jaime Elizondo.

Moving on …  It has been 7 months since allegations of sexual harassment and a “toxic work culture” in the front office of the Washington Football Team surfaced.  An attorney has been investigating the matter first at the behest of Danny Boy Snyder but subsequently answering to the league itself.  So far, all we have heard are crickets.  I read recently that the investigation is “nearing completion” – – to which I say, “high time”.  It is not clear what Roger Goodell is going to do with whatever report of findings he receives but various advocacy groups such as the ACLU and the National Women’s Law Center are demanding a full and public release.

Roger Goodell is in an unenviable position here.  If he opts not to release the findings of this prolonged investigation, there will be screeches of “COVER UP” from plenty of sports writers and broadcasters.  As a matter of fact, it would be difficult to come up with an explanation for such a decision that avoided some degree of “cover up”.  After all, if all those allegations were baseless and provably wrong, it would clearly be in the best interest of the NFL and Danny Boy Snyder to get that message out there.

I will not be surprised if the NFL seeks to limit damage here with the release of a redacted report.  Normally what happens with redacted reports is that there is a flurry of anger that “the public’s right to know” is being denied followed by a few speculative reports on what the redacted sections “must be about” and then the matter tends to fade to black.  That would be the easiest way out for The Commish…

His less wonderful scenario would go something like this:  [Remember, this is hypothetical; I am not suggesting any of this is factual…]

  • The findings of the report are myriad and disgusting.  Publicizing them will anger fans and “broadcast partners” and sponsors.
  • The findings of the report make it clear that the firing of several front office folks back in July 2020 was a necessary but not nearly sufficient response to the problems.
  • The source of any additional punishment becomes unclear because the report does not fully identify all the malefactors.

In that case, The Commish risks the wrath of fans, TV execs and sponsors and/or the wrath of at least one of the team owners – – and the owners are the Commish’s boss.  Reports say that Roger Goodell makes more than $40M per year in his job.  He may well earn his money as he finds his way along this thorny path.

Finally, I said here that Roger Goodell faces a dilemma.  So, let me offer him this smidgen of free advice:

  • When life gives you dilemmas, make dilemmanade.

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

 

 

An NBA All-Star Game ?

As I mentioned yesterday, the NBA plans to hold an All-Star Game this year in Atlanta on March 7th.  More than a couple of the league’s top players – – ones who are sure to be chosen to participate in the event such as LeBron James, James Harden and Kawhi Leonard – – have reacted negatively and publicly to the idea.  In the original NBA schedule set forth before the league began play just before Christmas, there was a 5-day hiatus built in; now that gap is to be filled with an All-Star Game and the associated nonsense that accompanies that event.

Before anyone clutters his/her mind with arriving at a justification for holding an All-Star Game while the US continues to fight off a pandemic, the answer is simple:

  • An All-Star Game – – and its associated nonsense – – will bring in more revenue to the league and therefore ultimately to the players than will a 5-day gap in the schedule.
  • Gussy this up however you will, this is simply a cash grab.

It is important to note here that the NBPA is not fighting the league tooth and nail over this issue.  To my mind, that reinforces my conclusion that this is a cash grab, and the union figures it to be in the best interests of its membership to “goose up” revenues considering losses incurred last season.  You may wonder why top-shelf players have reacted negatively to the idea of a concocted All-Star Game and it would be wrong to think that they all are getting so much guaranteed money that increased revenues are of little importance to them.

While that may in fact be true – – although I suspect it is not the case – – I think those players really wanted to have that break in the season as part of their overall “load management” for the season.  Moreover, it is the top-shelf players who are directly affected here.  LeBron James and James Harden etc. are the players who will be chosen to participate in the All-Star Game; Joe Flabeetz and Sam Glotz will be able to take a 5-day holiday as planned.  Moreover, the league rules and the existing CBA require players selected for the All-Star Game to show up and play if they are not injured.

This is a real labyrinth for the league, the union and the star players. Consider four possible courses of action and potential outcomes:

  1. Drop the idea of an All-Star Game after raising the possibility of holding it.  Both the league and the union would look pretty silly and it would signal another capitulation to the star players showing who actually runs things in the NBA.
  2. Make the All-Star break longer than 5 days to give participants some down time.  The only real problem here seems to be the fixation of starting the playoffs in mid-May to avoid as much as possible any overlap between the playoffs and the NFL regular season.  Extending the All-Star break cannot translate into extending the end of the regular season significantly.
  3. Hold the All-Star Game as envisioned now but allow players to opt out as a one-time “Pandemic Exception”.  This is probably the least onerous way out of the maze.  Yes, some will assert that the league and the union are knuckling under to pressure from the star players; but that would be less stinging than if the game were canceled entirely as above.  The loser here would be the “aura” of the NBA All-Star Game because ratings will not be nearly as high with Joe Flabeetz playing in place of LeBron James.
  4. Follow the money; put the game on the schedule and let the players be the “bad guys” who refuse to play.  This is the short-term gain in exchange for long-term pain solution.  The NBA has achieved its stature in US sports on two support pillars.  The first is television money; the other is by marketing its superstar players.  Forcing a showdown here would pit the superstars against TV money meaning there will be hard feelings among either the players or the TV execs down the road.

There are no easy ways out of this discombobulation now that the subject has been put in front of the NBA fanbase so long as this devolves into a power struggle.  If, on the other hand, there can be meaningful compromises made on all sides – – and I include the TV execs here as one of the sides being willing to compromise – – then maybe this does not have to devolve into hand-to-hand combat.  There is no imminent confrontation involved here regarding CBA negotiations; the current CBA runs through the end of the 2023-24 season (both sides can mutually opt out at the end of 2022-23 season) so any ill will generated here will have time to be tempered.  Maybe that is the best news to take away as of this morning…

Back before the NFL regular season began, I said that if Alex Smith ever stepped onto an NFL field in a real game, he would be the Comeback Player of the Year even if his ONLY participation was to do a kneel down at the end of a game.  Well, Smith did a lot more than that – – he was 5-1 as a starter this year – – and he was indeed the Comeback Player of the Year.  Remember, this man had 17 surgeries on his broken leg; at one point he was in the ICU in critical condition; at another point, the amputation of his leg was a real possibility.  Alex Smith’s injury was abnormally severe.

The Comeback Player of the Year award is decided by a vote of 50 media folks who cover the NFL.  I am not one; I do not know any of the people who do the voting.  Nevertheless, I am surprised that Alex Smith was not the unanimous selection this year; he received 49 of the 50 votes cast.  According to various reports, the “other vote” was for Ben Roethlisberger who returned from elbow surgery in the previous year.

Meaning exactly ZERO disrespect for Ben Roethlisberger, I believe that vote was miscast.  The fact that the vote was not unanimous is hardly important let alone critical, but I do wonder how someone could equate the depths from which the two QBs had come to regain a position as a starter in the 2020 NFL season.

Finally, when athletes recover from severe injuries or personal circumstances, people say the athletes “have heart”.  The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm has its own definition of “heart”:

“Heart:  1.  The part of the body that is usually said to have been in the right place when an idiot does something stupid.  2.  Female rock band of the 1970s that has been responsible for more alone-in-the-car head-banging, grip-the steering-wheel sing-alongs than mom or dad care to admit.”

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

 

 

The Bucs Win The Super Bowl !

Congratulations to the Tampa Bay Bucs; the combination of an efficient offense and a dominating defense made them Super Bowl champions last night.  After watching the Bucs last night, it is hard to fathom how that team lost to the Bears back in October scoring only 19 points in that game.  Let me make 5 overview comments/takeaways from the game last night:

  1. I did not like the officiating; they made several calls that looked “ticky-tack” to me and yet allowed lots of behavior that could well have drawn unsportsmanlike conduct flags.  The officiating did not decide the outcome, but I have seen games with better officiating.
  2. The injuries to the Chiefs’ OL were significant.  The Bucs have a good pass rush; last night it looked like the Fearsome Foursome.
  3. Todd Bowles called a great game on defense for the Bucs; he turned the Chiefs into a one-dimensional offense.
  4. Purely from an entertainment standpoint, this game was not particularly interesting from about the second quarter on.  The outcome was not really in doubt for the last 35-40 minutes of playing time.
  5. Between the advertisers’ virtue signaling and the NFL’s proclamations to demonstrate how “woke” it is and CBS’ incessant hawking of its new show, Clarice, are you ready to take to the streets to demand the return of the Budweiser frogs, the Clydesdales and the day-trading baby in his crib?

I must correct an erratum from last week’s Final Football Friday.  It came to me in an email from the person who is the Chief Logistics Officer for our annual Las Vegas Fall Pilgrimage – – a tradition seeking a return to normalcy in 2021.  Last week, I said that a memorable Super Bowl moment was Tom Brady’s Hail Mary pass against the Eagles falling incomplete.  Then I added this:

“Why that is particularly memorable is that if it had been complete, the Pats would have won the game AND Tom Brady would have broken the all-time NFL record for most yards passing in a game – a record that has stood since 1951.”

Here is the correction that needs to be made from my email notification:

“A minor nitpick – if I recall correctly, the Iggles won that NE SB by 8 (41-33), so I think your statement is wrong.  So actually they would have needed a 2-point conversion just to tie.”

That is not a “minor nitpick”; that is what happened in Super Bowl LII; my memory was faulty.

While I am in the mode of passing along email comments, I also received one over the weekend from the “reader in Houston” with another correction/clarification from the Final Football Friday.  In there, I said that Tom Brady had not been rated as a high school prospect when he graduated.  That is technically accurate – – but there is more to the story and a lot of the additional information can be lifted from the email I received:

“I don’t know which ratings service(s) that you’re referring to, but Rivals.com is probably the most “reliable” high school rating service. It never had a chance to rank Brady in 1996 because it didn’t start until the early 2000s.

“FYI – Chad Pennington (Jets), Giovanni Carmazzi (49ers), Chris Redman (Ravens), Tee Martin (Steelers), Marc Bulger (Saints) and Spergon Wynn (Browns) were the six QBs drafted ahead of Tom in the 2000 NFL draft.

“As Brady came along before the advent of Rivals.com, there was no ranking for him by them, when he was at Serra HS (San Mateo) before going on to Michigan.  Even at Michigan, he had to sit behind Brian Griese for two years and then, though he became the starting QB his last two years there, he platooned with Drew Henson.

“Even if Rivals.com was around in 1996, Brady wouldn’t have even been the best QB in California, since Carmazzi threw for almost 10,000 yards in his high school career and there’s definitely no way to really know where Tom would be ranked in the entire national recruiting class.”

The reader wonders what rating service(s) I was using; the answer is none of them.  I did a Google search on something like “Tom Brady high school prospect ratings” and got nothing; so, I varied the search a bit hoping to clarify and still got nothing.  Ergo, I concluded that he had not been rated as a prospect coming out of high school since the same sort of search query worked in the other cases cited.

I also mentioned last week that the Washington Wizards are off to a miserable start – – they are 5-15 as of this morning – – and Bradley Beal is getting frustrated.  He leads the league in scoring average (33.5 points per game), but he told a local reporter:

“I just hate losing…it’s been tough.”

Beal has been with the Wizards since the 2012-2013 season.  In that time – – and not adding in the results for the current season – – the Wizards record has been 309-337.  You would think he would have acclimated to losing by this point…

And speaking of the NBA – obliquely – the league is going to stage an All-Star Game in early March.  What a bad idea that is…  The league is struggling to put on its regular season games amid the pandemic and its byzantine COVID-19 protocols.  And so, instead of just taking a breather in the schedule hopefully to clamp down a bit on positive tests and contact tracing demands, the NBA will gather up a lot of players and move them to a site where they can play a totally meaningless couple of games along with even more meaningless events like the Slam Dunk Contest.  Someone in the NBA Executive Suites must have been sleep-deprived for about 96 hours to come up with that idea.

Finally, I said the NBA should take a break in the season “hopefully” to clamp down a bit on COVID-19.  Let me close today with the definition of “hopefully” from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Hopefully:  A word meaning ‘probably not.’  As in, ‘Hopefully, I will be able to make your newborn’s upcoming circumcision.’”

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