University with a spotty football history (perhaps attributable to Bear Bryant's leaving the place over 60 years ago) and an unquenched thirst to hit the bigtime.
Hires aggressive young coach with pedigree. University hires aggressive strength and conditioning coach. All universities do it -- musclehead motivators who are employed by the athletic department and can have contact with the players all year round. In contrast, team coaches have limits as to when they may be in contact with players. Strength and conditioning coaches are well paid; I would submit that there are a few out there who make more than their university presidents. They have a lot of power, in essence serving as the eyes and ears and factotums for the head coaches when the head coaches are not permitted to be in contact with players. These strength and conditioning coaches are not shrinking violets.
Young kid is big, gets a reputation for being able to move opponents around against their will on a football field. Many coaches sweet talk his parents. If the parents have been around the block, they realize that their kids' reality will change markedly once they join a football program. They will go from the romanced to bound by a strict regimen, a class schedule that must not conflict with football and a commitment to be on campus year-round so that they can benefit from the oversight of the nutrition and fitness efforts of the university. They get a full scholarship for this commitment, a laughably tiny stipend for incidentals, all the while the head coach makes millions, the assistant coaches make very nice livings and at times the kids don't have money for pizza. Each recruiter, including many a head coach, promises the parents -- and at times there is only one in the picture -- that he will take care of their son and help him grow into a better person through the development of strong habits and character. So goes the story line.
Jordan McNair died on a practice field in blistering Maryland summer heat in the summer of 2018. He was 19 years old. He wasn't feeling well in practice. Instead of adhering to protocols to make sure that he was not suffering from dehydration or an overly high body temperature, the athletic trainers were absent and the strength and conditioning coach bullied him. He died a few weeks later in a hospital. The university suspended the head football coach, head athletic trainer and strength and conditioning coach. They subsequently let go the strength and conditioning coach, paying him a settlement to take his talents elsewhere.
Yesterday, the University of Maryland shocked the world. The university president wanted to terminate the athletic director and head coach after a 192-page report that the board of regents had commissioned painted a dire picture of the culture within the football program at Maryland. The board of regents felt otherwise. Perhaps because they love the head coach and think he is a good fit and that what happened was a lamentable aberration. Perhaps because they got legal advice that they do not have a case for terminating the head coach for cause and that they would have to pay him over $10 million to part company were they to want to negotiate a settlement. Perhaps because in this day and age they figure that the next scandal will eclipse this one, everyone will forget about their decision and the storm will pass and that they have enough power and support to weather it. Perhaps because, while football parents protested and several players walked out of a meeting with the newly reinstated head coach, a larger core threatened to pull their kids out of school and off the team if the head coach were not reinstated. It is hard to know. The university president, by the way, lost the political and was forced out, announcing his retirement at the end of the year. He should have quit on the spot and sued the university for everything it has.
This episode further buttresses my long-standing maxim that I never wanted to send my kids to a school where a coach has too much power and makes more than the university president. Universities are supposed to educate kids meaningfully and to set standards for good behavior and the building of better character. What happened yesterday with the decision of the board of regents abandoned those lofty goals and revealed that the board of regents does not have much character at all. The death of a player -- in a toxic culture -- happened on the watch of this athletic director and this head football coach. It should not have happened. The entire football program owes a responsibility to all its players and it let not only the family of the deceased player down, but also the players who remain and their families. How can they trust this athletic director, this coach, this board of regents?
The answer is that they cannot. The University of Maryland has made a mess of this situation and has demonstrated that something is rotten within it and its culture. They should have cleaned house, they should have read the report more carefully and they should have realized that the culture this head coach created was so bad that someone died. Yes, this coach is worth a second chance somewhere in some type of job -- he made a grave mistake, many grave mistakes. Just not at Maryland and not right now.
The very sad truth right now is that had the head football coach put his hand on the breast of a cheerleader he would have lost his job. But create a harassing culture that causes a death?
He gets to keep it.
How does that make any sense at all?
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Gabe Kapler Should Hire a Lawyer; Phillies Should Be Worried About Future of Their Skipper
The Department of Justice is conducting an extensive probe of international activities of Major League Baseball teams. You can read one report on that probe here. You can ready another report on the alleged activities and what has prompted DOJ (as those in the legal biz refer to the Department of Justice) to investigate heavily, this one from Sports Illustrated.
Here are some things to think about:
1. DOJ turns away prosecutions in 80% of the matters that it looks into.
2. Allegations are, just that, allegations.
3. Shady and unethical behavior does not make it criminal.
4. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act came about in the late 1970's after a bunch of international scandals involving U.S.-based companies (somehow the name International Telephone and Telegraph comes to mind). Essentially, it makes it a felony to provide anything of value to foreign governmental officials to enable your company to get business.
5. It is unclear to me right now how the FCPA could be implicated in the signing of Latin American baseball players, unless teams offered payments to government officials to enable them to sign certain players.
6. The information that has emerged from the Dodgers is particularly troubling. My guess is that the Dodgers have lawyered up and are cooperating with Federal prosecutors to avoid a subpoena and to respond to whatever questions the government has at this time. Where it will get tricky for the Dodgers is the line between good cooperation designed to gain favor with DOJ when it comes to a remedy (that is a fine, a consent decree, a corporate integrity agreement, etc.) versus asserting the attorney-client privilege and ceasing their willingness to cooperate. That said, internal documents and e-mails that the business people created are not privileged, including the document in which someone in the Dodgers' front office assessed the ethics and compliance of various of the international operatives. Some of what is contained in that report should have prompted those executives to elevate the problem to senior management and the team's general counsel. (Of course, perhaps a reason for not doing so was that whoever created the report was worried that had he reported the concerns, he might have been terminated for hiring too many rogues or for not running a tight enough ship).
7. Gabe Kapler was the head of player development for the Dodgers for a few years, and perhaps for during the years that the DOJ is looking into. If that's the case -- or if he had anything to do with the assessment of the compliance and ethics of his colleagues -- at a minimum the DOJ will want to talk with him. My guess is that the Dodgers will offer to pay for his counsel and indemnify him up to a point, but there could be a point where the Dodgers give him the corporate version of the Miranda warning and advise him to get his own counsel (whether the Dodgers ultimately pay for that counsel could depend on whatever written agreement they have with Kapler about such things, if any, or what their policy is about such things, if any). All of this assumes, of course, that Kapler was in the middle of the alleged conduct.
8. The DOJ will dig in hard on matters like this. The more time it spends on this investigation, the greater the likelihood that it will want to come away with a settlement. And with MLB it could be easier pickings, because if they find violations of the FCPA it strikes me that they also could find that no team has an effective compliance program when it comes to its foreign business practices. And, if this is the case, it could be hard for MLB or its teams to try to isolate the behavior to a few rogue individuals because the teams themselves lacked policies, auditing, training, oversight. These, again, are big assumptions; it could be that MLB teams do all of that and that a few rogues "left the reservation" and behaved badly. But it also could be that the teams had an attitude of "get it done, beat the competition, just don't tell us how you got it done." The documents uncovered in one of the linked articles suggest a rather loose culture.
9. So, circling back to the focus of the investigation, or the apparent focus, the Braves and the Dodgers. Both teams should be worried, as should the individuals who ran the operations within those teams that are under scrutiny.
10. And if you are the Philadelphia Phillies, trying to rebound from many years of sub-.500 performances, you want to make sure that you have a manager with a clean record and without any distractions. Again, allegations are just that; we do not try people by newspaper on FCPA matters. The distractions, though, are another thing. Then there is the waiting -- the teams will turn over information to the DOJ and, mind you, this matter is far from the only one the Assistant U.S. Attorneys on the matter are involved with. It will take them time, along with their staffs, to review information. Then they will go back to the teams with questions and requests for more information and keep on turning over rocks until there are no more to turn over. They will interview many people in and outside baseball, mainly without the knowledge of the teams. And it will be a long and expensive process; it will not conclude until the DOJ is done.
At many levels this is a sad state of affairs for Major League Baseball. Latin America historically has been like California during the beginning of the Gold Rush, lots of activity, not a lot of rules, and now MLB has a big mess on its hands, at a minimum in terms of publicity and at a maximum if teams are charged and individuals indicted. MLB has an opportunity to clean this up and put in much more structure in this area. Whether the owners are willing to do so remains to be seen.
As for the Phillies and Kapler, well, neither need this problem at this time. The Phillies were about 15 over .500 on August 5 and had the worst record in baseball after that, a complete collapse that makes fans wonder whether the team can improve on a 78-win season or whether the team is a bucket of average players with a superstar pitcher atop the pecking order. Kapler presided over the good and, at the end, the bad and the ugly. That should be enough to worry about.
And now there is this.
Here are some things to think about:
1. DOJ turns away prosecutions in 80% of the matters that it looks into.
2. Allegations are, just that, allegations.
3. Shady and unethical behavior does not make it criminal.
4. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act came about in the late 1970's after a bunch of international scandals involving U.S.-based companies (somehow the name International Telephone and Telegraph comes to mind). Essentially, it makes it a felony to provide anything of value to foreign governmental officials to enable your company to get business.
5. It is unclear to me right now how the FCPA could be implicated in the signing of Latin American baseball players, unless teams offered payments to government officials to enable them to sign certain players.
6. The information that has emerged from the Dodgers is particularly troubling. My guess is that the Dodgers have lawyered up and are cooperating with Federal prosecutors to avoid a subpoena and to respond to whatever questions the government has at this time. Where it will get tricky for the Dodgers is the line between good cooperation designed to gain favor with DOJ when it comes to a remedy (that is a fine, a consent decree, a corporate integrity agreement, etc.) versus asserting the attorney-client privilege and ceasing their willingness to cooperate. That said, internal documents and e-mails that the business people created are not privileged, including the document in which someone in the Dodgers' front office assessed the ethics and compliance of various of the international operatives. Some of what is contained in that report should have prompted those executives to elevate the problem to senior management and the team's general counsel. (Of course, perhaps a reason for not doing so was that whoever created the report was worried that had he reported the concerns, he might have been terminated for hiring too many rogues or for not running a tight enough ship).
7. Gabe Kapler was the head of player development for the Dodgers for a few years, and perhaps for during the years that the DOJ is looking into. If that's the case -- or if he had anything to do with the assessment of the compliance and ethics of his colleagues -- at a minimum the DOJ will want to talk with him. My guess is that the Dodgers will offer to pay for his counsel and indemnify him up to a point, but there could be a point where the Dodgers give him the corporate version of the Miranda warning and advise him to get his own counsel (whether the Dodgers ultimately pay for that counsel could depend on whatever written agreement they have with Kapler about such things, if any, or what their policy is about such things, if any). All of this assumes, of course, that Kapler was in the middle of the alleged conduct.
8. The DOJ will dig in hard on matters like this. The more time it spends on this investigation, the greater the likelihood that it will want to come away with a settlement. And with MLB it could be easier pickings, because if they find violations of the FCPA it strikes me that they also could find that no team has an effective compliance program when it comes to its foreign business practices. And, if this is the case, it could be hard for MLB or its teams to try to isolate the behavior to a few rogue individuals because the teams themselves lacked policies, auditing, training, oversight. These, again, are big assumptions; it could be that MLB teams do all of that and that a few rogues "left the reservation" and behaved badly. But it also could be that the teams had an attitude of "get it done, beat the competition, just don't tell us how you got it done." The documents uncovered in one of the linked articles suggest a rather loose culture.
9. So, circling back to the focus of the investigation, or the apparent focus, the Braves and the Dodgers. Both teams should be worried, as should the individuals who ran the operations within those teams that are under scrutiny.
10. And if you are the Philadelphia Phillies, trying to rebound from many years of sub-.500 performances, you want to make sure that you have a manager with a clean record and without any distractions. Again, allegations are just that; we do not try people by newspaper on FCPA matters. The distractions, though, are another thing. Then there is the waiting -- the teams will turn over information to the DOJ and, mind you, this matter is far from the only one the Assistant U.S. Attorneys on the matter are involved with. It will take them time, along with their staffs, to review information. Then they will go back to the teams with questions and requests for more information and keep on turning over rocks until there are no more to turn over. They will interview many people in and outside baseball, mainly without the knowledge of the teams. And it will be a long and expensive process; it will not conclude until the DOJ is done.
At many levels this is a sad state of affairs for Major League Baseball. Latin America historically has been like California during the beginning of the Gold Rush, lots of activity, not a lot of rules, and now MLB has a big mess on its hands, at a minimum in terms of publicity and at a maximum if teams are charged and individuals indicted. MLB has an opportunity to clean this up and put in much more structure in this area. Whether the owners are willing to do so remains to be seen.
As for the Phillies and Kapler, well, neither need this problem at this time. The Phillies were about 15 over .500 on August 5 and had the worst record in baseball after that, a complete collapse that makes fans wonder whether the team can improve on a 78-win season or whether the team is a bucket of average players with a superstar pitcher atop the pecking order. Kapler presided over the good and, at the end, the bad and the ugly. That should be enough to worry about.
And now there is this.
Monday, October 08, 2018
Could a better financial model help all elite European football leagues?
Too few teams can contend for the title. Too many teams are "average" or a step ahead of relegation. While it might be fun to be a fan of Bayern Munich, Juventus or Barcelona, how much fun is it to see them beat up on weak opponents for most of their seasons? And how can those weak opponents sustain interest in their franchises over the long term if they realistically have zero chance of winning?
I believe that while studies have shown that higher payrolls do not guarantee championships, they also reveal that if a team is not in the top 5-10 in spending it will have a hard time qualifying for Champions League play. As Val Fitch, Nobel laureate in physics once put it -- "Excellence cannot be bought, but it must be paid for."
Suggestion to the European Leagues -- take Financial Fair Play a step further. Examine the salary caps in the National Hockey League, National Football League and National Basketball Association, along with their collective bargaining agreements, and also the luxury tax system in Major League Baseball. And come up with something that will give the Hudderfields, Real Betises, Sampdorias and Hoffenheims a real chance of winning your league.
That would make for more interesting weekends, better football, and a better experience for everyone.
I believe that while studies have shown that higher payrolls do not guarantee championships, they also reveal that if a team is not in the top 5-10 in spending it will have a hard time qualifying for Champions League play. As Val Fitch, Nobel laureate in physics once put it -- "Excellence cannot be bought, but it must be paid for."
Suggestion to the European Leagues -- take Financial Fair Play a step further. Examine the salary caps in the National Hockey League, National Football League and National Basketball Association, along with their collective bargaining agreements, and also the luxury tax system in Major League Baseball. And come up with something that will give the Hudderfields, Real Betises, Sampdorias and Hoffenheims a real chance of winning your league.
That would make for more interesting weekends, better football, and a better experience for everyone.
Tuesday, October 02, 2018
Goalkeepers
How can soccer experts tell that Jan Oblak of Atletico Madrid is the best keeper in the world (assuming that Bayern Munich's Manuel Neuer is rusty or lost something after missing most of last season)? For that matter, how can the experts tell which goalies are better than others.
Here's my thinking: Goalie A plays for the team that gives up 2.5 goals per match in the Premier League. He also has more saves than any keeper because his team's defense is porous and he gets more chances. Goalie B plays for the team that gives up 0.83 goals per match in the Premier League. He also ranks at the bottom of the save tally because his team's defense is the best in the league. Is either goalkeeper the best keeper in the league? And if not, who is?
Of course there is plenty of empirical evidence about the quality of footwork or not, the quality of the reactions on set pieces, the quality of positioning, and the quality of the pass that starts a counterattack. And those facts have to contribute. And perhaps today with all of the cameras and collection of data conclusions are much more than anecdotal -- they are factual. It would be helpful if the pundits should share that data to provide us with a measuring stick as to why Oblak, Becker, Courtois and De Gea are better than, say, Ederson, Lloris and Buffon. And if they are better, by how wide a margin?
Here's my thinking: Goalie A plays for the team that gives up 2.5 goals per match in the Premier League. He also has more saves than any keeper because his team's defense is porous and he gets more chances. Goalie B plays for the team that gives up 0.83 goals per match in the Premier League. He also ranks at the bottom of the save tally because his team's defense is the best in the league. Is either goalkeeper the best keeper in the league? And if not, who is?
Of course there is plenty of empirical evidence about the quality of footwork or not, the quality of the reactions on set pieces, the quality of positioning, and the quality of the pass that starts a counterattack. And those facts have to contribute. And perhaps today with all of the cameras and collection of data conclusions are much more than anecdotal -- they are factual. It would be helpful if the pundits should share that data to provide us with a measuring stick as to why Oblak, Becker, Courtois and De Gea are better than, say, Ederson, Lloris and Buffon. And if they are better, by how wide a margin?
On General Electric's Firing of John Flannery
Jack Welch was a GE legend. He definitely changed GE. He introduced concepts of Lean Six Sigma and basically trying to streamline operations, eliminate wasteful steps, make things more efficient. Retrospectively, what he did not do was to provide GE with a sustainable process for assessing businesses or a vision as to how GE could harness and own part of the future. In contrast, IBM, which once mastered the business of mainframe computers and then switched to PCs, had half of its income come from artificial intelligence this past year. So, was Welch the Alex Ferguson of GE? Or was he more the Arsene Wenger? Both are legends; the former, though, accomplished much more. The former has proven hard to succeed; the latter just left after last year, had a great run of qualifying for the Champions League (if not doing much in it) but last won the English Premier League in 2004.
Jeff Immelt succeeded Welch and last 16 years. During that time GE continued to focus on its "operational excellence," did not evolve, had dinosaurs for some business units that turned into albatrosses. It did not innovate. At all. Yet, Immelt survived for 16 years and had he put up Wenger-like results he would have been hailed as a hero. Instead, he fell somewhere in between Connie Mack (post-1932) and Jeff Fisher. The former had some of the worst teams in baseball after having some of the best; some suggested that July 9 be called "Jeff Fisher Day" because of the propensity for his teams to go 7-9.
So, you would have figured that after years of Immelt, GE would have permitted his successor, John Flannery, some time to rip things apart, create a new vision, put GE on a course with all of its resources and learning to become part of everyone's future, the same way IBM did. Okay, perhaps it won't be an Amazon or a Microsoft or a Google, but it could have owned some portion of the future. After all, it was not as though Flannery was replacing a Hall of Fame skipper. So what happened? They canned him after about a year, turning him into David Moyes but he wasn't replacing a guy like Ferguson. He was replacing someone whose stock was among the worst investments over a 15-year period, missing out on some big bull runs.
I am not an expert on GE. Hardly. And from the Wall Street Journal's account the board, after tolerating Immelt for 15+ years, grew impatient with the pace of change and some unforeseen writeoffs that Flannery sprung upon them. Fair enough. They also went outside their succession plan for the first time ever to tap a guy who ran a more successful conglomerate (Danaher) in Larry Culp, who became in essence the board's bench coach a year ago when he joined as "lead director." What he really was, in retrospect, was the head coach in waiting. He should remember that if the board he just joined lost patience with his predecessor, it could lose patience with him, too.
What GE needs to realize is what Jeff Bezos did. It isn't so much that you have industrial might; it is more so that you need algorithmic, analytic and algebraic might. Harness your data and math and figure out a way to transform yourself from a clunky conglomerate that makes good products and has offered at times some decent services into a real player into the future.
Just don't expect that vision or the radical change that is needed to occur in the same time they gave John Flannery to try to begin to turn things around.
For if the board does, it will change CEO's again, and then Culp turns into Louis van Gaal and GE will be searching for its version of Jose Mourinho. And last time I looked, the Hall of Fame skipper was having a rough time of it at the bellwether franchise.
Messes take a while to clean up. What is needed is not a passion about leaning things out and fixing things, but plotting a course for the future. IBM did it.
Can GE?
Jeff Immelt succeeded Welch and last 16 years. During that time GE continued to focus on its "operational excellence," did not evolve, had dinosaurs for some business units that turned into albatrosses. It did not innovate. At all. Yet, Immelt survived for 16 years and had he put up Wenger-like results he would have been hailed as a hero. Instead, he fell somewhere in between Connie Mack (post-1932) and Jeff Fisher. The former had some of the worst teams in baseball after having some of the best; some suggested that July 9 be called "Jeff Fisher Day" because of the propensity for his teams to go 7-9.
So, you would have figured that after years of Immelt, GE would have permitted his successor, John Flannery, some time to rip things apart, create a new vision, put GE on a course with all of its resources and learning to become part of everyone's future, the same way IBM did. Okay, perhaps it won't be an Amazon or a Microsoft or a Google, but it could have owned some portion of the future. After all, it was not as though Flannery was replacing a Hall of Fame skipper. So what happened? They canned him after about a year, turning him into David Moyes but he wasn't replacing a guy like Ferguson. He was replacing someone whose stock was among the worst investments over a 15-year period, missing out on some big bull runs.
I am not an expert on GE. Hardly. And from the Wall Street Journal's account the board, after tolerating Immelt for 15+ years, grew impatient with the pace of change and some unforeseen writeoffs that Flannery sprung upon them. Fair enough. They also went outside their succession plan for the first time ever to tap a guy who ran a more successful conglomerate (Danaher) in Larry Culp, who became in essence the board's bench coach a year ago when he joined as "lead director." What he really was, in retrospect, was the head coach in waiting. He should remember that if the board he just joined lost patience with his predecessor, it could lose patience with him, too.
What GE needs to realize is what Jeff Bezos did. It isn't so much that you have industrial might; it is more so that you need algorithmic, analytic and algebraic might. Harness your data and math and figure out a way to transform yourself from a clunky conglomerate that makes good products and has offered at times some decent services into a real player into the future.
Just don't expect that vision or the radical change that is needed to occur in the same time they gave John Flannery to try to begin to turn things around.
For if the board does, it will change CEO's again, and then Culp turns into Louis van Gaal and GE will be searching for its version of Jose Mourinho. And last time I looked, the Hall of Fame skipper was having a rough time of it at the bellwether franchise.
Messes take a while to clean up. What is needed is not a passion about leaning things out and fixing things, but plotting a course for the future. IBM did it.
Can GE?
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