No, Princeton was not a bubble team for either the NCAA men's or women's basketball tournament. The Ivy winner gets in and, except for the season for last when Princeton got in as an at-large bid, no one else from the Ivies gets in.
And, no, the Ivies don't have an "admissions" bubble. It's not as if their single-digit acceptance rates (for at least half the schools) will swell to the low twenties because people stop applying to places like Princeton. So far as anyone can tell, the Ivies are in and will be in as long as in is in, there is an in and they have tons of money.
The bubble can best be explained in this article. Princeton built Princeton Stadium oh so many years ago (about 20 by my count), and then a wealthy alum named Powers gave enough money to name the football field after him. Princeton apparently has tried to persuade wealthy alums to give sufficient funds to name the stadium after them, but no one has anted up (in contrast, Penn's stadium is named after its most famous community member, Benjamin Franklin. Perhaps Princeton should name the stadium after one of its most famous community members -- Albert Einstein).
What the development office at Princeton did do was to persuade some wealthy alum to donate $3.5 million to put a bubble over Powers Field during the cold-weather months so that various athletic teams can avail themselves of the surface. You heard right -- $3.5 million for a bubble over a field. This for a school that has some pretty outstanding athletic facilities already.
The bubble? Well, are Princeton's fundamental needs so taken care of that they can luxuriate in raising funds to put a bubble over the football field for $3.5 million dollars. Sure, we know the game -- if the alum wants to give money to sports, there's no use asking him to endow a chair or to provide scholarship monies for deserving students. The development office tries to match up desires of alums with needs of the school.
But a bubble? There are so many schools in so many communities that could put that same $3.5 million to great use. Take Mercer County Community College several miles away, an excellent community college that serves a very broad part of the Princeton area. Imagine what MCCC could do with $3.5 million. It's hard to say that they would spend it on a bubble for their fields; they wouldn't. And with global warming, a bubble isn't as needed as it might have been 40 years ago.
There are times that I don't get the Ivies. I like sports, but to me they focus too much of their attention to playing on the fringes of Division I, trying to win certain win percentage trophies and get their mentions in national publications, all the while donating an extraordinary percentage of their spots to athletes, a much higher percentage than any of the schools that compete at the highest levels of Division I. And for what purpose? To mollify alums who keep them rolling in the dough that the sports they played will continue to be prioritized? To build better people with better endurance and character who will make the world a better place? Can anyone come close to proving that? And do the student-athletes have qualifications as good as some of the brightest minds that might opt away from schools like this because they have zero interest in sports? Might it be better to do away with intercollegiate participation totally and instead focus on intramural competitions that take less time but also could drive school spirit? Questions abound.
Back to the bubble. It seems that Princeton's development office has a ton of time on its hands and has obtained targeted gifts for Princeton's most important projects if it had the time to raise $3.5 million for a bubble. A bubble for a football field.
Sheesh.
Thursday, April 06, 2017
Tuesday, April 04, 2017
Why Would Someone Play Division III Football?
There are obvious reasons to the question posed, including, "well, I just love to play the game and this was where I could continue my career." That is an answer, for sure. Another answer could be that football helped me get into a better school than I could have gotten into without it, so I have a sense of duty to continue playing. Another could be that one likes hitting people legally and figured that so long as someone would let him do it, he'd continue to do so. Yet another could be that it's the buddy sport that I am best at and there's nothing like playing with and next to your buddies and hanging out with them. Life will involve a lot of uneasy moments and requirements, so why not let it all out and have a lot of fun when I can?
But my question runs more deeply than that. Those answers assume that the question is about a sport that has no long-term health consequences for the participants. Basketball does not; football does. So if you don't get a scholarship (DIII schools do not offer athletic scholarships), if you don't play before big crowds (presumably these places are so small that they don't have enough kids to fill their stands or the kids they have are engaged in other activities that eclipse the importance of watching a game), and if you don't have a chance to play for money somewhere, why do it when four more years of continuous pounding could increase your likelihood of coming down with all sorts of ailments that will alter your quality of life and potentially shorten your life expectancy?
We can go through the justification loop in the first paragraph all that we want to. But DIII schools do not offer the argument that "well, these kids wouldn't even try to get there degrees if it weren't for football." Heck, that should not be the argument at any college anywhere at any time. That's the argument you hear from some people about why letting a high school basketball player with a challenging academic record to stay in school and play even though he is failing most of his subjects. The proferred reason: "well, he's in school, he's safe and it gives him something to do." Wow, that is a low bar, even if understandable in some circles and even justifiable in others. That is not this conversation, however.
Kids seek out DIII schools because of the outstanding education they should be able to receive. That education could propel them into a graduate or professional program or a career that they can enjoy and help make their communities better places. So, does banging one's limbs and head for 25 hours a week (plus the lengthy workouts with strength and conditioning coaches in the off-season) make any sense? Couldn't alternatives offer a good level of competition without the risk, whether they be intramurals or non-contact sports? For example, receivers and backs could be sprinters and linemen could toss the weights in the field events? There are intramurals as well, and even non-athletic competitions that could develop the players as people, as citizens, as community members.
The sports media focuses on the major health issues of former NFL players. Most recently in the news were Super Bowl hero Dwight Clark and former Eagles' running back Charlie Garner. Then there was the tragic case of Kevin Turner and the inspiring yet tragic case of former Saints player Steve Gleason. My sense is that if the sports media were to peel back the onion further, they'd find cases of former college football players suffering from similar maladies because of the accumulation of too many blows to the head and body since Pee Wee football.
The irony about the DIII players is that they are supposed to be smart guys, problem solvers who can play sports and excel in the classroom. They, themselves, should be able to figure out whether playing DIII football is a good proposition for them.
The country's population is such that these schools will continue to play the sport (risking the wrath of certain alumni were they to discontinue it) and there will be young men who find it glamorous and glorious to continue to play at this level. Then again, the administration of these schools along with parents of young men are smart, too, and they evolve. Perhaps the supply of potential players won't be the same, and perhaps the powers that be will evolve the game to the point that it ends up resembling Greco-Roman wrestling and lacrosse than the "three years and a cloud of dust" mentality that permeated the game forty years ago.
I have tried to find a compelling argument to support playing the sport at this level. I'm not sure it is there; I'm pretty much convinced it is not.
But my question runs more deeply than that. Those answers assume that the question is about a sport that has no long-term health consequences for the participants. Basketball does not; football does. So if you don't get a scholarship (DIII schools do not offer athletic scholarships), if you don't play before big crowds (presumably these places are so small that they don't have enough kids to fill their stands or the kids they have are engaged in other activities that eclipse the importance of watching a game), and if you don't have a chance to play for money somewhere, why do it when four more years of continuous pounding could increase your likelihood of coming down with all sorts of ailments that will alter your quality of life and potentially shorten your life expectancy?
We can go through the justification loop in the first paragraph all that we want to. But DIII schools do not offer the argument that "well, these kids wouldn't even try to get there degrees if it weren't for football." Heck, that should not be the argument at any college anywhere at any time. That's the argument you hear from some people about why letting a high school basketball player with a challenging academic record to stay in school and play even though he is failing most of his subjects. The proferred reason: "well, he's in school, he's safe and it gives him something to do." Wow, that is a low bar, even if understandable in some circles and even justifiable in others. That is not this conversation, however.
Kids seek out DIII schools because of the outstanding education they should be able to receive. That education could propel them into a graduate or professional program or a career that they can enjoy and help make their communities better places. So, does banging one's limbs and head for 25 hours a week (plus the lengthy workouts with strength and conditioning coaches in the off-season) make any sense? Couldn't alternatives offer a good level of competition without the risk, whether they be intramurals or non-contact sports? For example, receivers and backs could be sprinters and linemen could toss the weights in the field events? There are intramurals as well, and even non-athletic competitions that could develop the players as people, as citizens, as community members.
The sports media focuses on the major health issues of former NFL players. Most recently in the news were Super Bowl hero Dwight Clark and former Eagles' running back Charlie Garner. Then there was the tragic case of Kevin Turner and the inspiring yet tragic case of former Saints player Steve Gleason. My sense is that if the sports media were to peel back the onion further, they'd find cases of former college football players suffering from similar maladies because of the accumulation of too many blows to the head and body since Pee Wee football.
The irony about the DIII players is that they are supposed to be smart guys, problem solvers who can play sports and excel in the classroom. They, themselves, should be able to figure out whether playing DIII football is a good proposition for them.
The country's population is such that these schools will continue to play the sport (risking the wrath of certain alumni were they to discontinue it) and there will be young men who find it glamorous and glorious to continue to play at this level. Then again, the administration of these schools along with parents of young men are smart, too, and they evolve. Perhaps the supply of potential players won't be the same, and perhaps the powers that be will evolve the game to the point that it ends up resembling Greco-Roman wrestling and lacrosse than the "three years and a cloud of dust" mentality that permeated the game forty years ago.
I have tried to find a compelling argument to support playing the sport at this level. I'm not sure it is there; I'm pretty much convinced it is not.
Did the NHL Pick the Wrong Fight?
The NHL informed the players' union that the league will not permit its players to play for their national teams in the next Olympics.
On the face of it, it's a wise business decision. The international soccer world is rife with examples of players who travel extraordinary distances on their "international breaks" to play several games for their national teams despite whatever condition they might be in save unable to walk. I couldn't imagine how taxing it might be for Alexis Sanchez to travel from London to Santiago, Chile to play for his national team after a grueling round of games in the English Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League. But until they hit a certain age where it seems acceptable to retire from international competition and use breaks to re-charge, players seem duty-bound to put on their country's uniform and go full tilt for their national teams. Even in friendly matches, those that do count as attempts to get the team to qualify for a regional or international competition.
And, when they retire from international competition, it's a signal that they are close to the end of their careers and that they might not be as in demand on their professional teams or for the major professional teams any more. That retirement is bittersweet. Sure, they will get more rest, but they also are not as in demand as they once were.
Move over to the NHL, where the commitment to one's national team is not nearly as pronounced. Now, the NHL doesn't want to lend its players or see them get hurt, the latter a risk that is run continuously in soccer. It would be awful, for example, to see Diego Costa rupture an Achilles' tendon in a qualifying match between Spain and Monaco for the World Cup (presumably Monaco is not very good so the third-string striker for Spain would get the nod over Costa in that match, but you get the point). Except that this is not a qualifier, this is for the ultimate international competition in the hockey world -- the Olympics.
The NHL has told its players that their national teams are not important. The NHL is making players choose their profession over their country. In the business world, there's an old saying, especially when it comes to commitments from employees and having them come to work in extreme weather, that you should not make employees choose between their job and their families. People will elect to protect their homes and take care of their kids, who might have a day off from school, over their jobs. They have to -- it's a necessity. And unless they are required for an emergency and knew that when they accepted the job, they will harbor resentment for a while and you might "lose" them. So, managers are extremely careful in those situations.
How about country? How about telling a Swede, sorry, but you cannot play in the Olympics? Or any player? That's something that almost every player wants to do. The NHL is making players choose their jobs over their countries, and it just doesn't seem right. This is a leaden decision that puts business over raw emotion, over patriotism, over playing for your country and the love of the game. It's all because of money, and when that's the sole motivator, bad decisions can result and bad feelings will result. And these are bad feelings of the type that can last for a long time.
I doubt that this is the last step in the process. The NHL might think it has the right to do so and that it has good reasons, but they should remember another old adage, that one doesn't win by being right all the time. Public opinion and the players are against this decision, and the NHL cannot afford a lot of bad publicity. Their TV money isn't staggering, and their fan appeal is limited, no matter how vocal those who are about hockey advocate for it. There is no law out there that protects a league or its wealthy owners from themselves, but if there were one, it would get invoked here.
This is a bad decision. The NHL should fix it.
On the face of it, it's a wise business decision. The international soccer world is rife with examples of players who travel extraordinary distances on their "international breaks" to play several games for their national teams despite whatever condition they might be in save unable to walk. I couldn't imagine how taxing it might be for Alexis Sanchez to travel from London to Santiago, Chile to play for his national team after a grueling round of games in the English Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League. But until they hit a certain age where it seems acceptable to retire from international competition and use breaks to re-charge, players seem duty-bound to put on their country's uniform and go full tilt for their national teams. Even in friendly matches, those that do count as attempts to get the team to qualify for a regional or international competition.
And, when they retire from international competition, it's a signal that they are close to the end of their careers and that they might not be as in demand on their professional teams or for the major professional teams any more. That retirement is bittersweet. Sure, they will get more rest, but they also are not as in demand as they once were.
Move over to the NHL, where the commitment to one's national team is not nearly as pronounced. Now, the NHL doesn't want to lend its players or see them get hurt, the latter a risk that is run continuously in soccer. It would be awful, for example, to see Diego Costa rupture an Achilles' tendon in a qualifying match between Spain and Monaco for the World Cup (presumably Monaco is not very good so the third-string striker for Spain would get the nod over Costa in that match, but you get the point). Except that this is not a qualifier, this is for the ultimate international competition in the hockey world -- the Olympics.
The NHL has told its players that their national teams are not important. The NHL is making players choose their profession over their country. In the business world, there's an old saying, especially when it comes to commitments from employees and having them come to work in extreme weather, that you should not make employees choose between their job and their families. People will elect to protect their homes and take care of their kids, who might have a day off from school, over their jobs. They have to -- it's a necessity. And unless they are required for an emergency and knew that when they accepted the job, they will harbor resentment for a while and you might "lose" them. So, managers are extremely careful in those situations.
How about country? How about telling a Swede, sorry, but you cannot play in the Olympics? Or any player? That's something that almost every player wants to do. The NHL is making players choose their jobs over their countries, and it just doesn't seem right. This is a leaden decision that puts business over raw emotion, over patriotism, over playing for your country and the love of the game. It's all because of money, and when that's the sole motivator, bad decisions can result and bad feelings will result. And these are bad feelings of the type that can last for a long time.
I doubt that this is the last step in the process. The NHL might think it has the right to do so and that it has good reasons, but they should remember another old adage, that one doesn't win by being right all the time. Public opinion and the players are against this decision, and the NHL cannot afford a lot of bad publicity. Their TV money isn't staggering, and their fan appeal is limited, no matter how vocal those who are about hockey advocate for it. There is no law out there that protects a league or its wealthy owners from themselves, but if there were one, it would get invoked here.
This is a bad decision. The NHL should fix it.
You Cannot Tell Much from Opening Day Except That
the Padres are not a good baseball team and do not have much starting pitching. They could well lose more than 100 games. Just sayin'.
Friday, March 24, 2017
Is College Basketball Un-Watchable?
Even when Dean Smith perfected the "Four Corners" offense (in the days before the shot clock), it was riveting. Perhaps because there were fewer games on TV, perhaps because fewer teams made the tournament (back in the day, if you didn't win your conference, you didn't get in, period) or. . . perhaps because there aren't an incessant number of timeouts that break up if not inhibit the flow of play and enable coaches to micromanage almost every aspect of the game.
The NFL is bad enough. Sure, you need huddles, but then there are about 21 minutes of commercials per contest. If you've ever been to a stadium to watch a game, you wonder what's going on and why there is so much time when the players and the fans are just standing around. But in college basketball? TV timeouts every four minutes? Plus each team gets a multitude of timeouts per half. The average final three minutes of a close game can take 15 minutes or more to play.
So much for riveting, so much for a lot of drama happening fast. Nope, instead, what we get is a barrage of ads, a few plays, a foul, perhaps a change in possession and then a team calls a timeout. And then they play for 90 seconds, and then there is a turnover, a few fouls, a few bucket and then -- a TV timeout. So much for the flow of the game.
I like college basketball for the most part, but the length of the games, the amount of timeouts and ads can drive a fan to distraction -- or to do something else. Money, of course, dictates this course, and so long as the colleges follow the money, the problem is only going to get worse.
Let the players play -- and figure out a way to let a beautiful game flow as opposed to have constant interruptions. Watching college basketball today is like watching a classic movie on a commercial TV station -- there is no good way to break up the movie to place the commercials. Watching it in an arts theatre or on a pay channel without interruption guarantees the rendering that the writes and directors want you to see. Right now, we watch the games with too much interruption. Yes, timeouts always will be a part of the game -- but how many are needed, and how long must they be?
The NFL is bad enough. Sure, you need huddles, but then there are about 21 minutes of commercials per contest. If you've ever been to a stadium to watch a game, you wonder what's going on and why there is so much time when the players and the fans are just standing around. But in college basketball? TV timeouts every four minutes? Plus each team gets a multitude of timeouts per half. The average final three minutes of a close game can take 15 minutes or more to play.
So much for riveting, so much for a lot of drama happening fast. Nope, instead, what we get is a barrage of ads, a few plays, a foul, perhaps a change in possession and then a team calls a timeout. And then they play for 90 seconds, and then there is a turnover, a few fouls, a few bucket and then -- a TV timeout. So much for the flow of the game.
I like college basketball for the most part, but the length of the games, the amount of timeouts and ads can drive a fan to distraction -- or to do something else. Money, of course, dictates this course, and so long as the colleges follow the money, the problem is only going to get worse.
Let the players play -- and figure out a way to let a beautiful game flow as opposed to have constant interruptions. Watching college basketball today is like watching a classic movie on a commercial TV station -- there is no good way to break up the movie to place the commercials. Watching it in an arts theatre or on a pay channel without interruption guarantees the rendering that the writes and directors want you to see. Right now, we watch the games with too much interruption. Yes, timeouts always will be a part of the game -- but how many are needed, and how long must they be?
Thursday, March 23, 2017
The NBA and Rest
The complaint is not necessarily the problem. That's what a colleague once told me, and I think that there is a lot of wisdom in that comment.
Is the complaint that players are resting? Is it that they are not as tough as players were back in the day? Jalen Rose didn't take days off, Michael Jordan didn't, neither did Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain or Oscar Robertson. Ditto for Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and quite frankly anyone mentioned in Kurtis Blow's all-time rap, "Basketball."
It's not that, really. Resting players makes all the sense in the world. Okay, they don't do it in the NFL because the season is too short, but at times they do it in the English Premier League because with cup schedules and international schedules some players need a break. They also do so in baseball, but then again MLB has a 162-game season and that's a lot of games.
But the NBA has an 82-game schedule, and a lot of teams make the playoffs. Analytics tell teams a lot more than they did even ten years ago. And those metrics tell the teams that they should be resting players based upon their age, injury history, how many minutes they recently played, how many minutes they have played in their career and the likelihood the team can win (or not) without them. All of that augurs well for the teams and for the longevity of players.
The problem really is the integrity of the game. Oh, I'm not talking about whether coaches might be prone to throw games in order to help bettors. Heck, teams are throwing entire seasons to get better. The 76ers turned it into a science, and now the Lakers are emulating the Process. What the problem speaks to is that the league relies upon serious television dollars, and there's no way the networks ponied up the monies they did to see Lebron, Kevin and Kyrie all sit while their game was on prime time on Saturday night. Likewise, fans are asked to pay serious sums to watch their teams. Imagine the disappointment if they get a run of games where the visiting teams don't play their stars or the home team rests a few players. 76ers' fans anted up this year with the hope of seeing both Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid. The former hurt his foot in pre-season and despite hints from the franchise that he would return after the New Year, he's out for the season. Embiid played in 31 games with advertised "rest" games in between before being shelved this winter with a knee injury that wouldn't heal.
Where does this lead us? Well, for starters, the lucrative TV contract that is punishing ESPN (revenues are down at the worldwide leader) won't be as lucrative in the future if the networks aren't assured that the big names will be playing in games. The competing bidders won't bankrupt themselves in a "got to have it" bidding contest against other networks if they cannot promise their advertisers that they will draw a certain market share, and how can they do that if they will not be sure whether the stars will play in most of the games. Likewise, it's hard enough to ante up for a season ticket for most NBA teams, and it will be harder to push the button on the purchase if you aren't sure how healthy your team's young stars are (because there is a tendency to rest them) and if you cannot be guaranteed appearances by Cleveland's big three in your home game against them and appearances by Steph and the gang when the Warriors come into town. If the resting trend continues, season ticket sales will drop, deservedly, and the market on sites like StubHub will become all the more dynamic. Translated: you'll wait to buy a ticket on the secondary market once you get a sense of who is going to play. Why? The tickets are just too expensive.
Sure, there are the businesses who entertain, the very loyal fans and the like whose demand for the tickets is inelastic. But that's not most fans. Most fans want to see the stars, they want to see them consistently and they demand to see them for the games where they have paid $200 per ticket to go watch. Top that off with who you might or might not see on TV, and there is an integrity of the product problem surfacing, and it's ugly.
The NBA has a lot of smart people in its front office and in ownership. What the coaches are doing does make a lot of sense; the numbers back them up. That said, perhaps the answer is to shorten the regular season or space out the games more or something along those lines. Change is definitely warranted. If it doesn't happen, TV money, viewership and attendance will drop.
People just don't want to pay NBA prices for D-League games.
Is the complaint that players are resting? Is it that they are not as tough as players were back in the day? Jalen Rose didn't take days off, Michael Jordan didn't, neither did Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain or Oscar Robertson. Ditto for Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and quite frankly anyone mentioned in Kurtis Blow's all-time rap, "Basketball."
It's not that, really. Resting players makes all the sense in the world. Okay, they don't do it in the NFL because the season is too short, but at times they do it in the English Premier League because with cup schedules and international schedules some players need a break. They also do so in baseball, but then again MLB has a 162-game season and that's a lot of games.
But the NBA has an 82-game schedule, and a lot of teams make the playoffs. Analytics tell teams a lot more than they did even ten years ago. And those metrics tell the teams that they should be resting players based upon their age, injury history, how many minutes they recently played, how many minutes they have played in their career and the likelihood the team can win (or not) without them. All of that augurs well for the teams and for the longevity of players.
The problem really is the integrity of the game. Oh, I'm not talking about whether coaches might be prone to throw games in order to help bettors. Heck, teams are throwing entire seasons to get better. The 76ers turned it into a science, and now the Lakers are emulating the Process. What the problem speaks to is that the league relies upon serious television dollars, and there's no way the networks ponied up the monies they did to see Lebron, Kevin and Kyrie all sit while their game was on prime time on Saturday night. Likewise, fans are asked to pay serious sums to watch their teams. Imagine the disappointment if they get a run of games where the visiting teams don't play their stars or the home team rests a few players. 76ers' fans anted up this year with the hope of seeing both Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid. The former hurt his foot in pre-season and despite hints from the franchise that he would return after the New Year, he's out for the season. Embiid played in 31 games with advertised "rest" games in between before being shelved this winter with a knee injury that wouldn't heal.
Where does this lead us? Well, for starters, the lucrative TV contract that is punishing ESPN (revenues are down at the worldwide leader) won't be as lucrative in the future if the networks aren't assured that the big names will be playing in games. The competing bidders won't bankrupt themselves in a "got to have it" bidding contest against other networks if they cannot promise their advertisers that they will draw a certain market share, and how can they do that if they will not be sure whether the stars will play in most of the games. Likewise, it's hard enough to ante up for a season ticket for most NBA teams, and it will be harder to push the button on the purchase if you aren't sure how healthy your team's young stars are (because there is a tendency to rest them) and if you cannot be guaranteed appearances by Cleveland's big three in your home game against them and appearances by Steph and the gang when the Warriors come into town. If the resting trend continues, season ticket sales will drop, deservedly, and the market on sites like StubHub will become all the more dynamic. Translated: you'll wait to buy a ticket on the secondary market once you get a sense of who is going to play. Why? The tickets are just too expensive.
Sure, there are the businesses who entertain, the very loyal fans and the like whose demand for the tickets is inelastic. But that's not most fans. Most fans want to see the stars, they want to see them consistently and they demand to see them for the games where they have paid $200 per ticket to go watch. Top that off with who you might or might not see on TV, and there is an integrity of the product problem surfacing, and it's ugly.
The NBA has a lot of smart people in its front office and in ownership. What the coaches are doing does make a lot of sense; the numbers back them up. That said, perhaps the answer is to shorten the regular season or space out the games more or something along those lines. Change is definitely warranted. If it doesn't happen, TV money, viewership and attendance will drop.
People just don't want to pay NBA prices for D-League games.
Monday, March 13, 2017
Ivy Post-Season Tournament at the Palestra
I have to admit that other commitments had kept me away from the Princeton men's basketball team this year. Good commitments, at that -- family and work, to name a few. I also have to admit that when I saw that two starters were lost to the season for injury that I had my doubts about the Tigers' chances to win the Ivy title.
True, they had played well last year without center Hans Brase, who missed last season with a knee injury only to get hurt again and miss this season. But they also had played well with hard charging forward Henry Caruso, a returning all-Ivy pick, and it's hard to replace a player like that and win the league.
Down two starters, the Tigers adapted and improvised. Coaches will tell you that teams have a fork in the road when they lose key players. They can either use the injured teammates as an excuse or as a reason to adapt and step up. In the case of the Princeton Tigers, everyone -- including coach Mitch Henderson -- stepped up. Senior Spencer Weisz was named Ivy League player of the year; two teammates joined him on the Ivies' first team -- senior Steve Cook and sophomore guard Myles Stephens, who was named the Ivies' defensive player of the year, too. Add guards Amir Bell and Devin Cannady into the mix, and, while short, the Tigers best five were mobile and agile.
They went undefeated in the league and drew the first seed in the first-ever Ivy tournament, held at Penn's magical, mystical Palestra. The basketball gods worked in Penn's favor on the last weekend of the season, as Penn inexplicably lost to Dartmouth at home and then beat Harvard in the regular season's last game to earn the fourth seed. The Quakers won 6 of their last 8 Ivy games and were peaking at the right time.
The Quakers are a young team, giving only one senior meaningful minutes. Coach Steve Donahue was the legendary Fran Dunphy's top assistant at Penn, moved to Cornell where he took the Big Red to several titles and a Sweet 16 appearance, struggled and was fired at Boston College and returned to University City to take the helm at Penn. His Quakers got off to a great start, took the lead into half time, came out hot after half time, played good defense and hit the boards well. They were up four with under a minute to play -- only to have Princeton tie the game with five seconds to go to send it into overtime. In OT, it was all Princeton, and the Tiger players should have given their meal money to Stephens, whose outstanding game covered for a middling effort from Weisz, a disastrous shooting display by Cook and a disappearing act on offense by Cannady (who, admittedly, excelled in the last minute of OT by hitting every foul shoot he took -- and there were at least eight). [Note: Stephens ended up being named the tournament's MVP).
It was a great game, worthy of a championship tournament, worthy of the Palestra, and worthy of the Penn-Princeton rivalry. Strange things can happen in rivalries, and strange things can happen to visiting teams in legendary arenas (okay, so technically Penn was the visiting team because Princeton was the higher seed). It's also hard to beat a good team three times in one season, and Princeton had to do that twice over the weekend.
The arena was not packed. There did not seem to be the fervent atmosphere that populated the Palestra when Penn-Princeton regular season games were like playoff games. The teams were at the top of the league, and when there were no playoffs you really needed to beat your rival to get a leg up in the standings. The building used to be packed all the up to the rafters, the arena packed with students, the noise deafening.
I'll allow for the fact that some schools might have been on spring break, but I'll also argue that the student bodies have so much talent in so many areas and such diversity that everyone has a lot to do. Whatever the case, there were far fewer students from both schools than say there would have been three decades ago. I get it, times have changed, but playoffs are playoffs and when the prize for the weekend is a ticket to the Big Dance, you would have thought that there would have been more interest from students. There was interest -- from faculty, staff, alums and family -- and the atmosphere was good if not electric.
I wore my orange and black, saw some Penn friends, sat with a classmate and watched a good game. And then I watched the championship game on TV the next day, where Princeton took a half to figure out Yale before winning comfortably and cutting down the nets. The arena, from my vantage point on TV, looked less full on Day 2 than on Day 1. But perhaps that's the case with all tournaments -- the losers go home after they lose; their tickets go unclaimed.
It's fun to have your team go back to the tournament after a six-year absence. It's nice to see Mitch Henderson a great player and really good guy, get his first opportunity to coach in the NCAA tournament. Whether it's great that the Ivies have a playoff now, well, I'll continue to think about that.
True, they had played well last year without center Hans Brase, who missed last season with a knee injury only to get hurt again and miss this season. But they also had played well with hard charging forward Henry Caruso, a returning all-Ivy pick, and it's hard to replace a player like that and win the league.
Down two starters, the Tigers adapted and improvised. Coaches will tell you that teams have a fork in the road when they lose key players. They can either use the injured teammates as an excuse or as a reason to adapt and step up. In the case of the Princeton Tigers, everyone -- including coach Mitch Henderson -- stepped up. Senior Spencer Weisz was named Ivy League player of the year; two teammates joined him on the Ivies' first team -- senior Steve Cook and sophomore guard Myles Stephens, who was named the Ivies' defensive player of the year, too. Add guards Amir Bell and Devin Cannady into the mix, and, while short, the Tigers best five were mobile and agile.
They went undefeated in the league and drew the first seed in the first-ever Ivy tournament, held at Penn's magical, mystical Palestra. The basketball gods worked in Penn's favor on the last weekend of the season, as Penn inexplicably lost to Dartmouth at home and then beat Harvard in the regular season's last game to earn the fourth seed. The Quakers won 6 of their last 8 Ivy games and were peaking at the right time.
The Quakers are a young team, giving only one senior meaningful minutes. Coach Steve Donahue was the legendary Fran Dunphy's top assistant at Penn, moved to Cornell where he took the Big Red to several titles and a Sweet 16 appearance, struggled and was fired at Boston College and returned to University City to take the helm at Penn. His Quakers got off to a great start, took the lead into half time, came out hot after half time, played good defense and hit the boards well. They were up four with under a minute to play -- only to have Princeton tie the game with five seconds to go to send it into overtime. In OT, it was all Princeton, and the Tiger players should have given their meal money to Stephens, whose outstanding game covered for a middling effort from Weisz, a disastrous shooting display by Cook and a disappearing act on offense by Cannady (who, admittedly, excelled in the last minute of OT by hitting every foul shoot he took -- and there were at least eight). [Note: Stephens ended up being named the tournament's MVP).
It was a great game, worthy of a championship tournament, worthy of the Palestra, and worthy of the Penn-Princeton rivalry. Strange things can happen in rivalries, and strange things can happen to visiting teams in legendary arenas (okay, so technically Penn was the visiting team because Princeton was the higher seed). It's also hard to beat a good team three times in one season, and Princeton had to do that twice over the weekend.
The arena was not packed. There did not seem to be the fervent atmosphere that populated the Palestra when Penn-Princeton regular season games were like playoff games. The teams were at the top of the league, and when there were no playoffs you really needed to beat your rival to get a leg up in the standings. The building used to be packed all the up to the rafters, the arena packed with students, the noise deafening.
I'll allow for the fact that some schools might have been on spring break, but I'll also argue that the student bodies have so much talent in so many areas and such diversity that everyone has a lot to do. Whatever the case, there were far fewer students from both schools than say there would have been three decades ago. I get it, times have changed, but playoffs are playoffs and when the prize for the weekend is a ticket to the Big Dance, you would have thought that there would have been more interest from students. There was interest -- from faculty, staff, alums and family -- and the atmosphere was good if not electric.
I wore my orange and black, saw some Penn friends, sat with a classmate and watched a good game. And then I watched the championship game on TV the next day, where Princeton took a half to figure out Yale before winning comfortably and cutting down the nets. The arena, from my vantage point on TV, looked less full on Day 2 than on Day 1. But perhaps that's the case with all tournaments -- the losers go home after they lose; their tickets go unclaimed.
It's fun to have your team go back to the tournament after a six-year absence. It's nice to see Mitch Henderson a great player and really good guy, get his first opportunity to coach in the NCAA tournament. Whether it's great that the Ivies have a playoff now, well, I'll continue to think about that.
Wednesday, March 08, 2017
Whither Arsenal?
Arsene Wenger has been the manager of Arsenal for twenty years. For the past 19 seasons, the Gunners have finished in the top four in the EPL and have qualified for the Champions League. They also have a change to do so this year. For the past seven years, they lost in the first round of the knockout round in the Champions League. Among the excuses -- that the Gunners needed money to pay for their palatial stadium in North London and couldn't pay for players the way their competition did. While Arsenal fans didn't expect a perennial reprise of the Invincibles squad that went undefeated in the EPL about 13 years ago, they did expect to challenge for more trophies and titles than the team has since that time.
Critics and pundits abound. The big question is not whether Wenger is a good manager -- he has proven that -- but whether he has exhausted his possibilities in North London and the team needs to move on. Put differently, Wenger in recent years seems to have been a tinkerer, someone fond of looking for a missing piece, of finding joy in an incomplete player or in the possibilities of youth. While the Arsenal teams play in the rarified air of the EPL, something has prevented the team from finding a core of players that has the killer instinct to win trophies.
So, perhaps, the question is whether Wenger can find that core of players again or whether the team needs to move onto a younger generation of manager with a different philosophy and approach that perhaps can relate better to this generation of player and can elevate Arsenal back to its super-elite status amidst fervent completion from City, United, Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelsea.
A fundamental principle of human resources management is that if you seek to remove any employee, you better make sure that the replacement is better. In Wenger's case, that's a difficult challenge. While it might be clear to some that he has gotten someone stale in the job or at least has lost his magic touch, that doesn't mean that there are better managers out there who could fare better with whatever wallet the Arsenal owners have given Wenger or the players current on the roster. Remember, this is one of the best managers of all time, and remember that both David Moyes and Louis van Gaal struggled at Old Trafford when trying to succeed Sir Alex Ferguson. (For U.S. fans, everyone knew that Philadelphia had to move on from Andy Reid, who had struggled in his final years on the job -- but Chip Kelly proved to be a disaster after a good first season in Philadelphia. Put simply, Reid is an excellent coach, and perhaps there are only a half a dozen in the NFL who are better than he is. Eagles' fans don't lament Reid's departure, but they are frustrated with what they perceive to be lame attempts to find a worthy successor).
I will not address who possible successors might be. I had thought several years ago that after his success at Dortmund Juergen Klopp might have been the person, but he moved to Liverpool to replace Brendan Rogers several years ago. The truth there is that Klopp's record during his tenure at Liverpool is by a hair better than Rogers' was during the same time period. Then again, Chelsea's succession plan -- Conti for Mourhino -- looks like genius.
It strikes me that after the meltdown against Bayern Munich in the Champions League and after the benching of Alexis Sanchez for a dustup in practice leading up to the Liverpool game, that something is wrong in North London. It could be that Arsenal rallies and plays great football to earn a top-four finish in the EPL; the odds say otherwise, that they might end up on the outside looking in. They won't get past Chelsea or, for the first time since Wenger has been at Arsenal, Tottenham, and passing City might be iffy, too. So, it could be a three-way mad dash for fourth against United and Liverpool.
Those problems in North London have persisted over the years -- finding the right defensive midfield combination, consistent scoring from the strikers and enough toughness at midfield, plus the many injuries that key players have suffered over time. Right now, the chemistry isn't there, and typically when it's absent for a while, the master chemist gets sacked. Arsenal must treat Wenger with fairness and with dignity, but it increasingly looks like they will be looking to make a change after the season concludes. There just has not been sufficient progress over the past five years to conclude otherwise.
Critics and pundits abound. The big question is not whether Wenger is a good manager -- he has proven that -- but whether he has exhausted his possibilities in North London and the team needs to move on. Put differently, Wenger in recent years seems to have been a tinkerer, someone fond of looking for a missing piece, of finding joy in an incomplete player or in the possibilities of youth. While the Arsenal teams play in the rarified air of the EPL, something has prevented the team from finding a core of players that has the killer instinct to win trophies.
So, perhaps, the question is whether Wenger can find that core of players again or whether the team needs to move onto a younger generation of manager with a different philosophy and approach that perhaps can relate better to this generation of player and can elevate Arsenal back to its super-elite status amidst fervent completion from City, United, Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelsea.
A fundamental principle of human resources management is that if you seek to remove any employee, you better make sure that the replacement is better. In Wenger's case, that's a difficult challenge. While it might be clear to some that he has gotten someone stale in the job or at least has lost his magic touch, that doesn't mean that there are better managers out there who could fare better with whatever wallet the Arsenal owners have given Wenger or the players current on the roster. Remember, this is one of the best managers of all time, and remember that both David Moyes and Louis van Gaal struggled at Old Trafford when trying to succeed Sir Alex Ferguson. (For U.S. fans, everyone knew that Philadelphia had to move on from Andy Reid, who had struggled in his final years on the job -- but Chip Kelly proved to be a disaster after a good first season in Philadelphia. Put simply, Reid is an excellent coach, and perhaps there are only a half a dozen in the NFL who are better than he is. Eagles' fans don't lament Reid's departure, but they are frustrated with what they perceive to be lame attempts to find a worthy successor).
I will not address who possible successors might be. I had thought several years ago that after his success at Dortmund Juergen Klopp might have been the person, but he moved to Liverpool to replace Brendan Rogers several years ago. The truth there is that Klopp's record during his tenure at Liverpool is by a hair better than Rogers' was during the same time period. Then again, Chelsea's succession plan -- Conti for Mourhino -- looks like genius.
It strikes me that after the meltdown against Bayern Munich in the Champions League and after the benching of Alexis Sanchez for a dustup in practice leading up to the Liverpool game, that something is wrong in North London. It could be that Arsenal rallies and plays great football to earn a top-four finish in the EPL; the odds say otherwise, that they might end up on the outside looking in. They won't get past Chelsea or, for the first time since Wenger has been at Arsenal, Tottenham, and passing City might be iffy, too. So, it could be a three-way mad dash for fourth against United and Liverpool.
Those problems in North London have persisted over the years -- finding the right defensive midfield combination, consistent scoring from the strikers and enough toughness at midfield, plus the many injuries that key players have suffered over time. Right now, the chemistry isn't there, and typically when it's absent for a while, the master chemist gets sacked. Arsenal must treat Wenger with fairness and with dignity, but it increasingly looks like they will be looking to make a change after the season concludes. There just has not been sufficient progress over the past five years to conclude otherwise.
Tuesday, March 07, 2017
One of My Favorite NBA Players of All Time. . . And He Still Has Many Chapters to Write
Kawhi Leonard.
There it is.
Last night, he hit a three and then ran downcourt to block James Harden's layup as time was close to expiring to seal a win for the Spurs. A few seasons ago I saw him block a shot near the three-point line. No big deal? Well, what if I were to tell you that he simply ran down the court, not looking anywhere but ahead of him, trusting his instincts that the ball would end up in the hands of a teammate. It did, and that teammate through a football-like pass to him for a layup?
Basketball IQ? Off the charts.
Humility? Ditto.
I recall watching the Spurs dismantling of the Heat several years ago in the NBA Finals. I recall that LeBron and company simply could not keep up with the superior ball movement that the Spurs displayed. It was quite a work of art, and, in the center of it all, was a unique two-way player -- Kawhi Leonard.
There are great players who will draw more mention -- James, Harden, Russell Westbrook just to name three. Others in the equation at times are Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins of the Pelicans, the "Greek Freak" up in Milwaukee and of course almost the entire starting roster of the Golden State Warriors. And, of course, many others.
You don't hear as much about Leonard as some others because, well, you don't hear from Leonard himself. He is soft spoken, drives his old car and uses coupons to buy his favorite food -- wings. He does something that many advise on, even if few follow the advice -- he lets his play do his talking for him.
Look, if you're a hoops fan, you know what I'm talking about. This player is someone very special. If you're not a basketball fan or only a casual fan, watch the Spurs and confirm what I am talking about. He can handle the ball, he can pass, he can shoot it, he can rebound it and he can defend. He is a very complete player who excels in all aspects of the game.
A real treat to watch, especially for the connoisseur.
There it is.
Last night, he hit a three and then ran downcourt to block James Harden's layup as time was close to expiring to seal a win for the Spurs. A few seasons ago I saw him block a shot near the three-point line. No big deal? Well, what if I were to tell you that he simply ran down the court, not looking anywhere but ahead of him, trusting his instincts that the ball would end up in the hands of a teammate. It did, and that teammate through a football-like pass to him for a layup?
Basketball IQ? Off the charts.
Humility? Ditto.
I recall watching the Spurs dismantling of the Heat several years ago in the NBA Finals. I recall that LeBron and company simply could not keep up with the superior ball movement that the Spurs displayed. It was quite a work of art, and, in the center of it all, was a unique two-way player -- Kawhi Leonard.
There are great players who will draw more mention -- James, Harden, Russell Westbrook just to name three. Others in the equation at times are Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins of the Pelicans, the "Greek Freak" up in Milwaukee and of course almost the entire starting roster of the Golden State Warriors. And, of course, many others.
You don't hear as much about Leonard as some others because, well, you don't hear from Leonard himself. He is soft spoken, drives his old car and uses coupons to buy his favorite food -- wings. He does something that many advise on, even if few follow the advice -- he lets his play do his talking for him.
Look, if you're a hoops fan, you know what I'm talking about. This player is someone very special. If you're not a basketball fan or only a casual fan, watch the Spurs and confirm what I am talking about. He can handle the ball, he can pass, he can shoot it, he can rebound it and he can defend. He is a very complete player who excels in all aspects of the game.
A real treat to watch, especially for the connoisseur.
Monday, March 06, 2017
So What Does the Ivy League Regular Season Champion Get for Winning the Regular Season?
I don't know whether I am in favor of post-season college basketball tournaments. There is no denying that they are exciting, and everyone loves a seasonal Cinderella story. There is also no denying that some under-.500 hot team could get into the tournament after going on a run, only to get unmasked in the first round. It's different, of course, for a low- or mid-major as opposed to a power conference. The reason -- the regular-season champion from a power conference usually will get into the tournament even if it were to bow out in the first round. The mid- or low-major regular-season champion that loses in the tournament -- whatever the round -- risks not getting into the NCAA tournament.
The inaugural Ivy tournament should be exciting. You have regular-season champion Princeton, defending champion Yale, Harvard with its top-12 freshman class and perennial power Penn. That's a good group. But I posit this question: shouldn't the regular-season champion -- an undefeated champion at that -- get some benefit from having won the regular-season title? Holding the tournament is fine and perhaps long overdue -- but no bye, no home-court advantage, no well, to risk a double negative that is abhorrent to Ivy grammarians -- no . . . nothing?
Atop that, regular-season champion Princeton has to play Penn -- on Penn's home court. And, atop that, Penn is Princeton's arch-rival. You don't have to be a sports savant that special things can happen in arch-rivalries, regardless of who had the better season. I know, I know, if Princeton's that good and worthy of the title it should wipe the floor with Penn. But many experts argue that it is tough to beat the same team three times in one season.
Still, I think the Ivies would have been better off giving the top two seeds some benefit for their outstanding season -- such as a home game. In this fashion, Saturday's games might have become games on Thursday or Friday (also giving teams more than the current 24 hours they will have to rest before their conference finals) at the home court of the #1 and #2 seeds. That would have meant that Princeton would play Penn in Princeton and Harvard would play Yale in Cambridge. The winners would play on a pre-selected neutral floor -- perhaps Lehigh or Lafayette or Brown -- to determine the title.
Take a look at the ECAC hockey playoffs, where seemingly you get in if you showed up for the regular season. According to a friend who is an expert, the first four teams get a bye and then numbers 6 through 12 play a three-game playoff -- with each game played at the site of the higher seed. Each game, mind you! That shows that the regular season actually meant something more than just a high seed.
The current format seems flawed, especially if Penn improves and is a perennial #1 or #2 seed. I'm not sure that the rest of the Ivies will agree to let them have one or two home games every year to determine who goes to the NCAA tournament. Yes, the Palestra is one mighty special place and a great place to play and watch basketball -- one of the best ever. But that doesn't mean that historic places and monuments should trump neutrality or giving the regular-season championship some type of reward for winning the regular season. The bet here -- the location will change.
In the meantime, you have an undefeated team (great accomplishment in its own right, but especially noteworthy since it lost two starters at the season's outset), young team, defending champion and a pretty hot and young team. Great recipe for great theatre come Saturday and Sunday.
The inaugural Ivy tournament should be exciting. You have regular-season champion Princeton, defending champion Yale, Harvard with its top-12 freshman class and perennial power Penn. That's a good group. But I posit this question: shouldn't the regular-season champion -- an undefeated champion at that -- get some benefit from having won the regular-season title? Holding the tournament is fine and perhaps long overdue -- but no bye, no home-court advantage, no well, to risk a double negative that is abhorrent to Ivy grammarians -- no . . . nothing?
Atop that, regular-season champion Princeton has to play Penn -- on Penn's home court. And, atop that, Penn is Princeton's arch-rival. You don't have to be a sports savant that special things can happen in arch-rivalries, regardless of who had the better season. I know, I know, if Princeton's that good and worthy of the title it should wipe the floor with Penn. But many experts argue that it is tough to beat the same team three times in one season.
Still, I think the Ivies would have been better off giving the top two seeds some benefit for their outstanding season -- such as a home game. In this fashion, Saturday's games might have become games on Thursday or Friday (also giving teams more than the current 24 hours they will have to rest before their conference finals) at the home court of the #1 and #2 seeds. That would have meant that Princeton would play Penn in Princeton and Harvard would play Yale in Cambridge. The winners would play on a pre-selected neutral floor -- perhaps Lehigh or Lafayette or Brown -- to determine the title.
Take a look at the ECAC hockey playoffs, where seemingly you get in if you showed up for the regular season. According to a friend who is an expert, the first four teams get a bye and then numbers 6 through 12 play a three-game playoff -- with each game played at the site of the higher seed. Each game, mind you! That shows that the regular season actually meant something more than just a high seed.
The current format seems flawed, especially if Penn improves and is a perennial #1 or #2 seed. I'm not sure that the rest of the Ivies will agree to let them have one or two home games every year to determine who goes to the NCAA tournament. Yes, the Palestra is one mighty special place and a great place to play and watch basketball -- one of the best ever. But that doesn't mean that historic places and monuments should trump neutrality or giving the regular-season championship some type of reward for winning the regular season. The bet here -- the location will change.
In the meantime, you have an undefeated team (great accomplishment in its own right, but especially noteworthy since it lost two starters at the season's outset), young team, defending champion and a pretty hot and young team. Great recipe for great theatre come Saturday and Sunday.
Monday, February 27, 2017
76ers -- "Fraud" on the Customer
The 76ers moved their "re-up" and "sign-up" for season tickets to early February, or so it seemed that way. I recall a calendar entry that appeared to have put this activity in the March-April time frame.
It was hard to blame them, as the team got hot and Joel Embiid, then a sure-shot candidate for rookie of the year, was playing out of his mind, as were many of his teammates. They were playing so well, in fact, that the team won more games in January than the defending champion Cavaliers. They got so hot that in their pursuit to get some help for LeBron James, the Cavs pursued 76ers' starting point guard T.J. McConnell, an undrafted free agent who was putting up a staggeringly good assist-to-turnover ratio. (The team nixed the Cavs' overtures).
People got excited. Not only were they "trusting the process," a tribute to deposed GM Sam Hinkie, but they also were "raising the cat," a bow to top pick Ben Simmons, who had yet to play a single minute for the team. Atop that, Simmons was due back in February and Embiid, despite a tweaked knee, was due back after the All-Star game. Or so that was the report.
Fast forward to after the All-Star break and the team is once again in a state of semi-limbo. As it turns out, Simmons' foot has not healed properly (something the team must have known before the push to sign people up for season tickets for next year) and Embiid's knee was healing slowly (which did not stop him from dancing at a Meek Mill concert but apparently might stop him from playing for the rest of the year). Which means that either the 76ers' are furthering Hinkie's strategy of tanking by putting the breaks on the team so that it has a low enough finish to get the draft pick they want -- since the team isn't going to make the playoffs this year -- or they are just floundering and catching their breath after snookering their very loyal fans into re-upping with the hope that the good feelings would continue after January and mid-February and that they would get to see Embiid and Simmons together on the court for the rest of the year and a taste of things to come. That was most certainly what they were banking on when they moved up the season-ticket sign-up and renewal date as early as they did.
Except that the hope was a mirage. They had to have known that Simmons wasn't healing right and also had it in mind that they were not going to rush Embiid and didn't care if they play him again because now the game is to get the best draft pick possible, which runs contrary to winning as many games as possible. Yes, the guys on the floor have shown something and yes, they care, but the whole situation is suspect. What did Josh Harris and Bryan Colangelo know -- and when did they know it?
The fan base has been very loyal to this ownership group, in part because they rescued the team from Ed Snider and Comcast. And, in part, because this ownership group seemingly wants to put a special team on the floor.
But there are only so many times you can fib to the base or rely on their loyalty and hope. The 76ers have gone to the well one more time with their fans, and the well of good will is getting pretty dry. For the well to fill up, they will need to draft well and then to field a lineup that can make the playoffs next season.
Because this particular fib is a pretty bad one.
They didn't have to sell any more hope to the fans and worse, they didn't need to lie to them.
It was hard to blame them, as the team got hot and Joel Embiid, then a sure-shot candidate for rookie of the year, was playing out of his mind, as were many of his teammates. They were playing so well, in fact, that the team won more games in January than the defending champion Cavaliers. They got so hot that in their pursuit to get some help for LeBron James, the Cavs pursued 76ers' starting point guard T.J. McConnell, an undrafted free agent who was putting up a staggeringly good assist-to-turnover ratio. (The team nixed the Cavs' overtures).
People got excited. Not only were they "trusting the process," a tribute to deposed GM Sam Hinkie, but they also were "raising the cat," a bow to top pick Ben Simmons, who had yet to play a single minute for the team. Atop that, Simmons was due back in February and Embiid, despite a tweaked knee, was due back after the All-Star game. Or so that was the report.
Fast forward to after the All-Star break and the team is once again in a state of semi-limbo. As it turns out, Simmons' foot has not healed properly (something the team must have known before the push to sign people up for season tickets for next year) and Embiid's knee was healing slowly (which did not stop him from dancing at a Meek Mill concert but apparently might stop him from playing for the rest of the year). Which means that either the 76ers' are furthering Hinkie's strategy of tanking by putting the breaks on the team so that it has a low enough finish to get the draft pick they want -- since the team isn't going to make the playoffs this year -- or they are just floundering and catching their breath after snookering their very loyal fans into re-upping with the hope that the good feelings would continue after January and mid-February and that they would get to see Embiid and Simmons together on the court for the rest of the year and a taste of things to come. That was most certainly what they were banking on when they moved up the season-ticket sign-up and renewal date as early as they did.
Except that the hope was a mirage. They had to have known that Simmons wasn't healing right and also had it in mind that they were not going to rush Embiid and didn't care if they play him again because now the game is to get the best draft pick possible, which runs contrary to winning as many games as possible. Yes, the guys on the floor have shown something and yes, they care, but the whole situation is suspect. What did Josh Harris and Bryan Colangelo know -- and when did they know it?
The fan base has been very loyal to this ownership group, in part because they rescued the team from Ed Snider and Comcast. And, in part, because this ownership group seemingly wants to put a special team on the floor.
But there are only so many times you can fib to the base or rely on their loyalty and hope. The 76ers have gone to the well one more time with their fans, and the well of good will is getting pretty dry. For the well to fill up, they will need to draft well and then to field a lineup that can make the playoffs next season.
Because this particular fib is a pretty bad one.
They didn't have to sell any more hope to the fans and worse, they didn't need to lie to them.
Friday, January 20, 2017
Trust the Process
Sam Hinkie was right.
And Ben Simmons has not yet played a single minute for the Philadelphia 76ers.
And Ben Simmons has not yet played a single minute for the Philadelphia 76ers.
Friday, January 13, 2017
The Philadelphia Eagles Fired Their Wide Receivers Coach
I am not an expert in root cause analysis and do not claim to be. I have heard the term used enough to know that the best way to solve a problem, particularly a persistent, vexing one, is to determine the root cause. Too frequently, we attack the symptoms and not the cause. Take healthcare. Instead of examining people's lifestyles, doctors' prescribe pills. A lot of healthcare problems can be solved by having people stand more at work, walk more during the day and reduce their fast-food and sugar intake. My bet is that fewer pills would be needed if people attacked the causes of their problems.
That's my preamble for what the Philadelphia Eagles did last week. Admittedly, Greg Lewis was a reach for a receivers' coach because he had no experience. What made the choice more of a reach was that the Eagles' receiving corps was young and inexperienced and lacking a senior mentor to teach them the little things that can differentiate between being successful in the NFL and getting cut. What the Eagles did was pair a rookie coach with perhaps the worst receiving corps in the NFL.
The results were predictable. That's not to say that Don Coryell, the architect behind the famous "Air Coryell" teams with San Diego in the 1970's, could have done much with this bunch. Greg Lewis didn't have a chance. This corps either couldn't get open or, if they did, they had trouble catching the ball. At some point, coaching doesn't matter; talent does. And that's the root cause of the Eagles' problem.
You could bring in Jerry Rice or Michael Irvin to coach this bunch and it wouldn't matter much. But you could bring in a real GM and front-office team that more emulates what Jimmy Johnson did with the Cowboys in the early 1990's (finding bargains everywhere) than what Howie Roseman and crew are accomplishing now. The root cause in the receiving problem? It's not Greg Lewis. It's not the head coach.
It's the owner, who seems wed to this GM, and the entire organizational culture. New England takes Eagles' castoffs Patrick Chung and Eric Rowe and makes them successful starters at defensive backs. The Eagles? Well, they seem to misfire in many places. Greg Lewis did not cause the receivers' problems, not even close.
But the Eagles showed their fan base, which by the way is not gullible, a firing, as if to say, "we're on it and we're holding people accountable." The miscue there is that they are holding the wrong person accountable. Too bad you cannot fire the owner, because until he wakes up and realizes that his front office is undermanned and outgunned, more mistakes will happen and continue to happen.
Fire the receivers coach?
That's not the root cause. Not even close.
That's my preamble for what the Philadelphia Eagles did last week. Admittedly, Greg Lewis was a reach for a receivers' coach because he had no experience. What made the choice more of a reach was that the Eagles' receiving corps was young and inexperienced and lacking a senior mentor to teach them the little things that can differentiate between being successful in the NFL and getting cut. What the Eagles did was pair a rookie coach with perhaps the worst receiving corps in the NFL.
The results were predictable. That's not to say that Don Coryell, the architect behind the famous "Air Coryell" teams with San Diego in the 1970's, could have done much with this bunch. Greg Lewis didn't have a chance. This corps either couldn't get open or, if they did, they had trouble catching the ball. At some point, coaching doesn't matter; talent does. And that's the root cause of the Eagles' problem.
You could bring in Jerry Rice or Michael Irvin to coach this bunch and it wouldn't matter much. But you could bring in a real GM and front-office team that more emulates what Jimmy Johnson did with the Cowboys in the early 1990's (finding bargains everywhere) than what Howie Roseman and crew are accomplishing now. The root cause in the receiving problem? It's not Greg Lewis. It's not the head coach.
It's the owner, who seems wed to this GM, and the entire organizational culture. New England takes Eagles' castoffs Patrick Chung and Eric Rowe and makes them successful starters at defensive backs. The Eagles? Well, they seem to misfire in many places. Greg Lewis did not cause the receivers' problems, not even close.
But the Eagles showed their fan base, which by the way is not gullible, a firing, as if to say, "we're on it and we're holding people accountable." The miscue there is that they are holding the wrong person accountable. Too bad you cannot fire the owner, because until he wakes up and realizes that his front office is undermanned and outgunned, more mistakes will happen and continue to happen.
Fire the receivers coach?
That's not the root cause. Not even close.
Mike & Mike to Split Up?
That would be something.
About 15 years ago I had a long commute, and I found a new ESPN radio show on morning drive time. I had heard of Mike Golic, who was perhaps the most anonymous defensive lineman for Buddy Ryan's great defenses in Philadelphia. You would have been anonymous too if the other three linemen were named Reggie White, Jerome Brown and Clyde Simmons. I hadn't heard of Mike Greenberg, but he impressed me immediately. He was part show host, part fan and part sports nerd, but with the right type of ego. Not the type of "I am in love with myself ego" that some others on ESPN have, but the type that says "I know my stuff and am determined to be fair and get it right." Together, Greenberg, trained as a journalist, and Golic, a well-informed, homework-doing former athlete, showed promise.
I went home and told my wife that I had found a wonderful show, and that these two would be stars.
I was right.
Back then, as they were in formation, the show was chock full of information as ads were fewer and farther between than they are now, as the show seems to have so many adds as to dilute the message and the content. But that's business, and that's a measure of their success.
What made and makes them so appealing is that they provide information and not just opinions, and they avoid the rants and outsized personalities that can populate and at times plague sports talk radio in any city. I like to spend my free time getting informed, relaxed and at times amused. Hearing a drive-time talk show host call his callers idiots frequently (as one so-called luminary in Philadelphia did for a while) is not appealing. That behavior is not amusing; it is unkind.
This article offers up the possibility that Mike Greenberg will become the centerpiece of a newly formatted morning Sports Center show. He certainly deserves that, as for years I had thought that, like Robin Roberts, his talents would have translated to a morning news show, such as "Today" or "Good Morning America." Mike Golic's future is unclear. He is a talent, but he and Greenberg have a unique chemistry that I am not sure that any replacement host can replicate. Trey Wingo has been stellar at ESPN for years, but if he were to replace Mike Greenberg, the comparisons would be inevitable, and I think he would be, rightly or wrongly, on the losing side of them.
I hope that ESPN finds a good slot for Mike Golic, Sr., who is knowledgeable and lovable. Mike Golic, Jr.'s lack of success making an NFL team has turned out to be a boost for his media career and for ESPN. The latter has unearthed a solid talent in his very formative journalistic years. Mike Jr. is smart and reasonably polished for a young show host. I am less certain whether pairing him with his father is a good idea. They both have so much in common that I am less certain whether the show will offer significantly varying perspectives. This is a high-class problem; both are good.
I suppose that many good runs have to come to an end. Some might argue that they have run their course; others might argue that this is the evolution of the sports media business. The latter has to be more accurate in this case. Mike & Mike is an excellent show, and I wish both Mikes nothing but the best. They have enriched their audiences for a long run.
About 15 years ago I had a long commute, and I found a new ESPN radio show on morning drive time. I had heard of Mike Golic, who was perhaps the most anonymous defensive lineman for Buddy Ryan's great defenses in Philadelphia. You would have been anonymous too if the other three linemen were named Reggie White, Jerome Brown and Clyde Simmons. I hadn't heard of Mike Greenberg, but he impressed me immediately. He was part show host, part fan and part sports nerd, but with the right type of ego. Not the type of "I am in love with myself ego" that some others on ESPN have, but the type that says "I know my stuff and am determined to be fair and get it right." Together, Greenberg, trained as a journalist, and Golic, a well-informed, homework-doing former athlete, showed promise.
I went home and told my wife that I had found a wonderful show, and that these two would be stars.
I was right.
Back then, as they were in formation, the show was chock full of information as ads were fewer and farther between than they are now, as the show seems to have so many adds as to dilute the message and the content. But that's business, and that's a measure of their success.
What made and makes them so appealing is that they provide information and not just opinions, and they avoid the rants and outsized personalities that can populate and at times plague sports talk radio in any city. I like to spend my free time getting informed, relaxed and at times amused. Hearing a drive-time talk show host call his callers idiots frequently (as one so-called luminary in Philadelphia did for a while) is not appealing. That behavior is not amusing; it is unkind.
This article offers up the possibility that Mike Greenberg will become the centerpiece of a newly formatted morning Sports Center show. He certainly deserves that, as for years I had thought that, like Robin Roberts, his talents would have translated to a morning news show, such as "Today" or "Good Morning America." Mike Golic's future is unclear. He is a talent, but he and Greenberg have a unique chemistry that I am not sure that any replacement host can replicate. Trey Wingo has been stellar at ESPN for years, but if he were to replace Mike Greenberg, the comparisons would be inevitable, and I think he would be, rightly or wrongly, on the losing side of them.
I hope that ESPN finds a good slot for Mike Golic, Sr., who is knowledgeable and lovable. Mike Golic, Jr.'s lack of success making an NFL team has turned out to be a boost for his media career and for ESPN. The latter has unearthed a solid talent in his very formative journalistic years. Mike Jr. is smart and reasonably polished for a young show host. I am less certain whether pairing him with his father is a good idea. They both have so much in common that I am less certain whether the show will offer significantly varying perspectives. This is a high-class problem; both are good.
I suppose that many good runs have to come to an end. Some might argue that they have run their course; others might argue that this is the evolution of the sports media business. The latter has to be more accurate in this case. Mike & Mike is an excellent show, and I wish both Mikes nothing but the best. They have enriched their audiences for a long run.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Year-end observations and musings
1. Oh to be Jaromir Jagr and still playing the game you love at the age of 44.
2. Saw parts of the Kentucky-North Carolina game. There was a player out there who had some Michael Jordan-esque moves. Problem for the Tar Heels was that he played for Kentucky. Name: Malik Monk.
3. Bucks have a 6'11 point guard whose last name you cannot pronounce or spell, but he's one of the top players in the NBA. His name: Giannis Antetokounmpo.
4. If the FCS has an eight-team playoff, why shouldn't the FBS have one?
5. Joel Embiid has been worth the wait. Plays like a combination of Olajuwon and Chamberlain. Problem is that the 76ers' guards play like another Chamberlain -- Neville.
6. Dak Prescott is having an amazing year. No one can take that away from him. I wonder whether Carson Wentz would have had a similar year if he played behind that line with that running back and those receivers.
7. Will someone call the Federal Trade Commission and try to prod the NCAA and SEC to break up the Alabama Crimson Tide?
8. Gender bias is apparent in sports, period. Otherwise, how can you explain the relative lack of coverage of the UConn women's basketball team (or, for that matter, my listing this eighth).
9. Does the English Premier Soccer League give us the rock star athletes like the NBA? Just asking. Games are fun to watch, and the crowds are excellent.
10. If Theo Epstein were to pull off a third miracle after Boston and Chicago, what would the world do for him, give him? Pretty amazing feats, what with all the attention in both cities.
11. Will the Warriors smoke everyone in the post-season or will the playoffs expose their lack of depth? Team isn't as deep as last season, and while that does not matter in the regular season, it might in the playoffs. I would do everything to pry Nerlens Noel from the 76ers as a back-line stopper on defense. The kid has game.
12. Westown School in Pennsylvania has two or three future NBA players on its front line, one of whom has the second largest wingspan in all of organized basketball. Question is how those players make their way to a league that isn't usually known for its sports. Schools are good, and perhaps for some boys' hoops is an exception.
13. Thankfully the Carr football family has found some good fortune. Older brother David had a great college career and tons of talent, only to have the Texans' o-line perform so badly that he turned himself into a tackling dummy and didn't have the career forecast for him. Younger brother Derek has found a great situation in Oakland and, as Jon Gruden predicted, is off to a great start in his career.
14. Will this be Andy Reid's year to win a Super Bowl? The guy is an excellent coach, yet his team's have been marred by the occasional Achilles' heel over the years. Last week's failure to beat the Titans at home in the frigid weather revealed that Big Red's team cannot always get it done in the clutch. It's a long season, and New England and Oakland look formidable.
15. Saw that Jimmy Rollins signed a minor-league deal with the SF Giants. Methinks that he and his former teammate, Carlos Ruiz, will manage in the Majors some day. J-Roll could add a veteran presence and clutch bat to Bruce Bochy's bench. Speaking of former Phillies, someone should sign Chase Utley. Guy is a flat-out gamer.
16. What goes around comes around. During their great years from say 2007-2011, the Phillies were so popular that they sold out several hundred consecutive games at Citizens Bank Park and that the Nationals and Pirates both advertised in Philadelphia for fans to visit their stadiums during that era. Phillies' fans got so confident that they waved a banner in D.C. that exclaimed "Citizens Bank Park South." How the mighty have fallen.
17. Ivy League men's hoops just aren't the same as they were when Penn and Princeton ruled and that rivalry was riveting and everything. Sorry, Harvard, but you have taken the fun out of things.
Happy Holidays!
2. Saw parts of the Kentucky-North Carolina game. There was a player out there who had some Michael Jordan-esque moves. Problem for the Tar Heels was that he played for Kentucky. Name: Malik Monk.
3. Bucks have a 6'11 point guard whose last name you cannot pronounce or spell, but he's one of the top players in the NBA. His name: Giannis Antetokounmpo.
4. If the FCS has an eight-team playoff, why shouldn't the FBS have one?
5. Joel Embiid has been worth the wait. Plays like a combination of Olajuwon and Chamberlain. Problem is that the 76ers' guards play like another Chamberlain -- Neville.
6. Dak Prescott is having an amazing year. No one can take that away from him. I wonder whether Carson Wentz would have had a similar year if he played behind that line with that running back and those receivers.
7. Will someone call the Federal Trade Commission and try to prod the NCAA and SEC to break up the Alabama Crimson Tide?
8. Gender bias is apparent in sports, period. Otherwise, how can you explain the relative lack of coverage of the UConn women's basketball team (or, for that matter, my listing this eighth).
9. Does the English Premier Soccer League give us the rock star athletes like the NBA? Just asking. Games are fun to watch, and the crowds are excellent.
10. If Theo Epstein were to pull off a third miracle after Boston and Chicago, what would the world do for him, give him? Pretty amazing feats, what with all the attention in both cities.
11. Will the Warriors smoke everyone in the post-season or will the playoffs expose their lack of depth? Team isn't as deep as last season, and while that does not matter in the regular season, it might in the playoffs. I would do everything to pry Nerlens Noel from the 76ers as a back-line stopper on defense. The kid has game.
12. Westown School in Pennsylvania has two or three future NBA players on its front line, one of whom has the second largest wingspan in all of organized basketball. Question is how those players make their way to a league that isn't usually known for its sports. Schools are good, and perhaps for some boys' hoops is an exception.
13. Thankfully the Carr football family has found some good fortune. Older brother David had a great college career and tons of talent, only to have the Texans' o-line perform so badly that he turned himself into a tackling dummy and didn't have the career forecast for him. Younger brother Derek has found a great situation in Oakland and, as Jon Gruden predicted, is off to a great start in his career.
14. Will this be Andy Reid's year to win a Super Bowl? The guy is an excellent coach, yet his team's have been marred by the occasional Achilles' heel over the years. Last week's failure to beat the Titans at home in the frigid weather revealed that Big Red's team cannot always get it done in the clutch. It's a long season, and New England and Oakland look formidable.
15. Saw that Jimmy Rollins signed a minor-league deal with the SF Giants. Methinks that he and his former teammate, Carlos Ruiz, will manage in the Majors some day. J-Roll could add a veteran presence and clutch bat to Bruce Bochy's bench. Speaking of former Phillies, someone should sign Chase Utley. Guy is a flat-out gamer.
16. What goes around comes around. During their great years from say 2007-2011, the Phillies were so popular that they sold out several hundred consecutive games at Citizens Bank Park and that the Nationals and Pirates both advertised in Philadelphia for fans to visit their stadiums during that era. Phillies' fans got so confident that they waved a banner in D.C. that exclaimed "Citizens Bank Park South." How the mighty have fallen.
17. Ivy League men's hoops just aren't the same as they were when Penn and Princeton ruled and that rivalry was riveting and everything. Sorry, Harvard, but you have taken the fun out of things.
Happy Holidays!
Friday, December 16, 2016
The Wake Forest Football Scandal
Alum becomes assistant coach. Head coach gets fired. New head coach doesn't want assistant coach on his staff. Assistant coach becomes a member of the school's broadcast team. A good job if one wants to a) stay in Winston-Salem, b) work for his alma mater and c) stay in football so that perhaps he can get another coaching job somewhere some day.
All that makes sense. Alums don't have some divine right to have a permanent job in some capacity at their alma mater, no matter how much they loved their experience as students. Football coaching is a meritocracy, to wit: if you coach for a winner therefore you are a winner and therefore you will continue to be a desired member of a staff. Conversely, if you coach for a losing team, no matter how good of a coach you might be, well, your job security isn't the same and your desirability on the assistant coaching job market will not be what you want it to be. It's pretty much that simple. Sure, you might have been in the wrong job in the wrong place at the wrong time and get resurrected quickly at an equivalent position, especially if you have a mentor who has a need, but that doesn't always happen. Sometimes, you have to take a step sideways or backward to map out a new path forward.
The Tommy Elrod story started that way. He was a co-offensive coordinator under the prior head coach and the new guy didn't want him on his staff. There could have been a lot of reasons, but all that matters is that the new coach should be entitled to hire whomever he wants. And the new coach, Dave Clawson, did just that. And Elrod ended up in the broadcast booth.
And that's when a screw seemingly went loose in Elrod. I don't need to link to the many stories, but the gist is this -- for some reason, Elrod, who had significant access to the Wake program, took it upon himself on multiple occasions, apparently, to pass along plays to Wake's opponents. Former players speculated on ESPN that he did this for money; Mike Greenberg wondered aloud whether payments were involved. What's clear is that if this happened, it's a Benedict Arnold-level treasonous offense in the world of football. You just do not do that. That clearly crosses the ethical line if not the legal one.
The scrutiny right now is on Elrod, but what about the teams that might have taken the Wake plays and done something with them? What is the accountability for that? The culpability. What Elrod did clearly was wrong, but I'd submit that if investigations uncover that other programs willingly took and used the plays that Elrod shared with them to their advantage, then everyone involved in the taking of the secrets should be held accountable. What should they have done? Simply said, "not interested" and walked away. Better yet, they might have called Coach Clawson and told him that this was going on.
What should the consequences be for those programs and people involved? That's not for me to decide. My guess is that facts and circumstances will decide the punishment, which could involve termination or suspensions and fines. This seems to be an unusual and rare situation, but it also must be one that must not be tolerated.
The story is sad, pathetic and hard to believe. I can understand that Elrod might have felt disappointment and frustration. And it could have been the case that he didn't like the way he was spoken to. Perhaps he felt ignored, dismissed, condescended to, or avoided or something else. Even if he wasn't treated the way he wanted to be, his remedy for the situation was extreme.
And for that he will need to find work far away from his alma mater and outside the game of football.
All that makes sense. Alums don't have some divine right to have a permanent job in some capacity at their alma mater, no matter how much they loved their experience as students. Football coaching is a meritocracy, to wit: if you coach for a winner therefore you are a winner and therefore you will continue to be a desired member of a staff. Conversely, if you coach for a losing team, no matter how good of a coach you might be, well, your job security isn't the same and your desirability on the assistant coaching job market will not be what you want it to be. It's pretty much that simple. Sure, you might have been in the wrong job in the wrong place at the wrong time and get resurrected quickly at an equivalent position, especially if you have a mentor who has a need, but that doesn't always happen. Sometimes, you have to take a step sideways or backward to map out a new path forward.
The Tommy Elrod story started that way. He was a co-offensive coordinator under the prior head coach and the new guy didn't want him on his staff. There could have been a lot of reasons, but all that matters is that the new coach should be entitled to hire whomever he wants. And the new coach, Dave Clawson, did just that. And Elrod ended up in the broadcast booth.
And that's when a screw seemingly went loose in Elrod. I don't need to link to the many stories, but the gist is this -- for some reason, Elrod, who had significant access to the Wake program, took it upon himself on multiple occasions, apparently, to pass along plays to Wake's opponents. Former players speculated on ESPN that he did this for money; Mike Greenberg wondered aloud whether payments were involved. What's clear is that if this happened, it's a Benedict Arnold-level treasonous offense in the world of football. You just do not do that. That clearly crosses the ethical line if not the legal one.
The scrutiny right now is on Elrod, but what about the teams that might have taken the Wake plays and done something with them? What is the accountability for that? The culpability. What Elrod did clearly was wrong, but I'd submit that if investigations uncover that other programs willingly took and used the plays that Elrod shared with them to their advantage, then everyone involved in the taking of the secrets should be held accountable. What should they have done? Simply said, "not interested" and walked away. Better yet, they might have called Coach Clawson and told him that this was going on.
What should the consequences be for those programs and people involved? That's not for me to decide. My guess is that facts and circumstances will decide the punishment, which could involve termination or suspensions and fines. This seems to be an unusual and rare situation, but it also must be one that must not be tolerated.
The story is sad, pathetic and hard to believe. I can understand that Elrod might have felt disappointment and frustration. And it could have been the case that he didn't like the way he was spoken to. Perhaps he felt ignored, dismissed, condescended to, or avoided or something else. Even if he wasn't treated the way he wanted to be, his remedy for the situation was extreme.
And for that he will need to find work far away from his alma mater and outside the game of football.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Aaargh, Arsenal!
A colleague once advised not to take victory laps. His reasoning: because every time you take one, there is someone standing in the shadows near the last quarter turn, waiting to take your knees out with a baseball bat.
The commenters on NBC Sports Channel the other day made a great point about Chelsea in its lackluster 1-0 win on Sunday against West Brom. The men in blue could not get much started and only had two shots on goal in the entire match, yet came away with the victory because Diego Costa took advantage of a lone West Brom defensive lapse with about ten minutes left in regulation to win the game. Afterwards, Robbie Mustoe noted that this is the type of win that leads to championships, because Chelsea were/was not at their/its (note the allocation for English versus American usages) best during the match.
And that's what good teams do -- they win when not playing their best. And this is a far different team from the one that Arsenal embarrassed 3-0 at the Emirates several months ago. Better organized and in a formation that works for them. And that gets us to. . . Arsenal.
The Gunners smashed West Ham almost all the way to the English Championship League three matches ago, and followed that pounding with a blasting of Basel in their final match in the Group States in the Champions League and then followed that match with a convincing 3-1 win over Stoke just on Sunday.
And then they traveled to Everton, a team by all accounts (including that of their manager) in poor form. The good news was that they took a 1-0 league through a fortuitous result on a free kick by Alexis Sanchez. But then their lack of defensive depth hurt them. They have been missing captain Per Mertesacker all year and recently lost Shkrodan Mustafi to a pulled hamstring about a week ago. And that meant they moved Gabriel Paulista back to his natural center back position (he had been filling in at right back after Hector Bellerin was injured, back-up Matthieu Debuchy got injured and further back-up Carl Jenkinson proved ineffective). Somehow, the chemistry with acting captain Laurent Koscielny was not there, and Everton scored once right before the end of the first half and four minutes before stoppage time began to seal a much-needed victory at Goodison Park.
To paraphrase Robbie Mustoe's astute comment after the Chelsea-West Brom match, if Arsenal fails to win the league this season, they'll look to the 0-0 match against Middlesbrough at Emirates and this match as evidence that they were not a championship team. Because a championship team would have found a way to score against recently promoted Middlesbrough and a championship team would have found a way to beat a downtrodden Everton yesterday.
Don't get me wrong -- this looks to be the best Gunners' team in years. Arsene Wenger has a find in Alexis Sanchez at striker, Mesut Ozil is picking up where he left off from last year and both Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo Walcott are vastly improved from the year before. The offense is high-powered and in gear. As for the defense, well, they are not as good as Tottenham, and they miss holding mid Santi Cazorla. Granit Xhaka has played well in spurts, but he is simple one ill-timed challenge away from a red card. And the back line, which looked to be settled, has gone through some rough times because of injury and a rough time on Tuesday.
Are the Gunners' chances gone? Slim? Fading?
Hardly, as it is just too early.
But they will need to win the games that they are supposed to -- in addition to the ones they are not -- in order to win the title. One data point does not make a trend, as the Everton game was just a bad game for them.
The commenters on NBC Sports Channel the other day made a great point about Chelsea in its lackluster 1-0 win on Sunday against West Brom. The men in blue could not get much started and only had two shots on goal in the entire match, yet came away with the victory because Diego Costa took advantage of a lone West Brom defensive lapse with about ten minutes left in regulation to win the game. Afterwards, Robbie Mustoe noted that this is the type of win that leads to championships, because Chelsea were/was not at their/its (note the allocation for English versus American usages) best during the match.
And that's what good teams do -- they win when not playing their best. And this is a far different team from the one that Arsenal embarrassed 3-0 at the Emirates several months ago. Better organized and in a formation that works for them. And that gets us to. . . Arsenal.
The Gunners smashed West Ham almost all the way to the English Championship League three matches ago, and followed that pounding with a blasting of Basel in their final match in the Group States in the Champions League and then followed that match with a convincing 3-1 win over Stoke just on Sunday.
And then they traveled to Everton, a team by all accounts (including that of their manager) in poor form. The good news was that they took a 1-0 league through a fortuitous result on a free kick by Alexis Sanchez. But then their lack of defensive depth hurt them. They have been missing captain Per Mertesacker all year and recently lost Shkrodan Mustafi to a pulled hamstring about a week ago. And that meant they moved Gabriel Paulista back to his natural center back position (he had been filling in at right back after Hector Bellerin was injured, back-up Matthieu Debuchy got injured and further back-up Carl Jenkinson proved ineffective). Somehow, the chemistry with acting captain Laurent Koscielny was not there, and Everton scored once right before the end of the first half and four minutes before stoppage time began to seal a much-needed victory at Goodison Park.
To paraphrase Robbie Mustoe's astute comment after the Chelsea-West Brom match, if Arsenal fails to win the league this season, they'll look to the 0-0 match against Middlesbrough at Emirates and this match as evidence that they were not a championship team. Because a championship team would have found a way to score against recently promoted Middlesbrough and a championship team would have found a way to beat a downtrodden Everton yesterday.
Don't get me wrong -- this looks to be the best Gunners' team in years. Arsene Wenger has a find in Alexis Sanchez at striker, Mesut Ozil is picking up where he left off from last year and both Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo Walcott are vastly improved from the year before. The offense is high-powered and in gear. As for the defense, well, they are not as good as Tottenham, and they miss holding mid Santi Cazorla. Granit Xhaka has played well in spurts, but he is simple one ill-timed challenge away from a red card. And the back line, which looked to be settled, has gone through some rough times because of injury and a rough time on Tuesday.
Are the Gunners' chances gone? Slim? Fading?
Hardly, as it is just too early.
But they will need to win the games that they are supposed to -- in addition to the ones they are not -- in order to win the title. One data point does not make a trend, as the Everton game was just a bad game for them.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
The 76ers' Problem with Its Ticket Holders
Ben Simmons broke his foot before the season and is out until at least January.
Nerlens Noel had knee surgery and is out indefinitely, has not played all year.
Jahlil Okafor and Joel Embiid are on a diet of restricted minutes owing to Okafor's pre-season knee surgery and Embiid's well-chronicled foot malady.
The team worked hard to sell season ticket plans in the off-season. Really hard.
It's bad enough to have four high first-round picks out. What's worse, though, is that Embiid is getting needed rest, sometimes at home. The tickets aren't cheap, especially not for a product as inept as the 76ers' product has been over the past several years. It has been inept even to those who trust the process. If it has not been, then they are lying to themselves. There is some good basketball on certain nights and at certain times, but on other night it is plum awful. It's a given that Noel (who doesn't excite the fans) and Simmons (who will) are out for a while. Okafor seems like a dinosaur out there, a throwback to the days where teams pounded the ball into the post. The fans are indifferent about him. Embiid, though, is a different story.
He is everything the fans hoped for. He is THAT tall, at 7'2". He can put the ball on the floor. He can shoot the three, and he is a presence in the paint at both ends of the ball. Atop that, he plays with a zing, an oomph, a zest, a zeal, well, a personality. Simmons might have one; Okafor does not, and neither does Noel. Then again, the latter two might re-develop them after being cogs in Duke Hoops, Inc. and Kentucky Basketball Corporation, where the coaches and the brand take precedence over any individual, even if the individuals have transcending talent.
Yet, the fans who have ponied up some very good money are looking at a D-League to D-League Plus team on any given night. True, Okafor is hard to guard in the paint and foreign imports Ilyasova and Saric are good; the former can score and the latter can do a lot of things. Nick Stauskas might have jump-started his career again, but Robert Covington is a shooter who right now cannot shoot and Gerald Henderson is a well-intentioned journeyman at the two guard position. Point guards Sergio Rodriguez and T.J. McConnell are back-ups, and Jerryd Bayless is a journeyman too. Put differently, they scare no one. Healthy, the team is lopsided and has too many promising, potentially very good bigs. Injured? It is more balanced but without consistent appearances from good bigs it is not a good basketball team.
As for the fans, yes, they did pay their money, probably because they trust the process and the potential of Simmons and Embiid particularly is tough to argue with. That said, they deserve far better than not knowing when Embiid will and will not play and in all likelihood some nice gifts from the 76ers because the fans this year did not sign up for a season without Ben Simmons and for a partial season of Joel Embiid.
These fans might trust the process, but they are running out of trust for management.
Nerlens Noel had knee surgery and is out indefinitely, has not played all year.
Jahlil Okafor and Joel Embiid are on a diet of restricted minutes owing to Okafor's pre-season knee surgery and Embiid's well-chronicled foot malady.
The team worked hard to sell season ticket plans in the off-season. Really hard.
It's bad enough to have four high first-round picks out. What's worse, though, is that Embiid is getting needed rest, sometimes at home. The tickets aren't cheap, especially not for a product as inept as the 76ers' product has been over the past several years. It has been inept even to those who trust the process. If it has not been, then they are lying to themselves. There is some good basketball on certain nights and at certain times, but on other night it is plum awful. It's a given that Noel (who doesn't excite the fans) and Simmons (who will) are out for a while. Okafor seems like a dinosaur out there, a throwback to the days where teams pounded the ball into the post. The fans are indifferent about him. Embiid, though, is a different story.
He is everything the fans hoped for. He is THAT tall, at 7'2". He can put the ball on the floor. He can shoot the three, and he is a presence in the paint at both ends of the ball. Atop that, he plays with a zing, an oomph, a zest, a zeal, well, a personality. Simmons might have one; Okafor does not, and neither does Noel. Then again, the latter two might re-develop them after being cogs in Duke Hoops, Inc. and Kentucky Basketball Corporation, where the coaches and the brand take precedence over any individual, even if the individuals have transcending talent.
Yet, the fans who have ponied up some very good money are looking at a D-League to D-League Plus team on any given night. True, Okafor is hard to guard in the paint and foreign imports Ilyasova and Saric are good; the former can score and the latter can do a lot of things. Nick Stauskas might have jump-started his career again, but Robert Covington is a shooter who right now cannot shoot and Gerald Henderson is a well-intentioned journeyman at the two guard position. Point guards Sergio Rodriguez and T.J. McConnell are back-ups, and Jerryd Bayless is a journeyman too. Put differently, they scare no one. Healthy, the team is lopsided and has too many promising, potentially very good bigs. Injured? It is more balanced but without consistent appearances from good bigs it is not a good basketball team.
As for the fans, yes, they did pay their money, probably because they trust the process and the potential of Simmons and Embiid particularly is tough to argue with. That said, they deserve far better than not knowing when Embiid will and will not play and in all likelihood some nice gifts from the 76ers because the fans this year did not sign up for a season without Ben Simmons and for a partial season of Joel Embiid.
These fans might trust the process, but they are running out of trust for management.
Friday, September 30, 2016
Nick Saban is Just Wrong about Blake Barnett
Fact: Top program in country recruits elite players.
Speculation: To program in country perhaps recruits too many of them.
Fact: Only one quarterback can play that position at a time.
Speculation: Top programs recruit many elite quarterbacks, realizing that not all can handle college, the pressure, their system and that not all improve after high school.
Fact: Quarterbacks transfer. Blake Barnett, a five-star recruit out of California, just pulled the plug on his stay at Alabama, will transfer to a junior college and then be eligible to play for an FBS program this time next year should he have the grades and credits. Read more about his story and Saban's reaction here.
Analysis: Barnett did not quit in the sense that Saban says he did. Saban gets the analysis partially right -- the kids do get all sorts of ideas in their heads about how good they are and how much they should be playing. Heck, the top programs help foster a system that creates a star system among recruits and pumps them up with all sorts of ideas as to what they can achieve at a big-name program. It's a circular system, in that that's how the big-time programs get these kids -- by pumping them up or underscoring the hype. Atop that, it used to be the case that the programs had all of the power and that a commitment meant an unbreakable bond between school and kid, even if it turned out that the kid will sit for most of his career because, well, he isn't all that good. But it also was the case that programs tried to and succeeded to run kids off the team, precisely because they weren't all that good. Today it's the case that programs cannot offer an unlimited amount of scholarships (they are limited to 85) and that scholarships are one-year renewable, which means that if a kid has a bad year, the team can "non-renew" him and cut him loose without any commitment to his education. So if a program can do that, what's wrong with Blake Barnett's departure? Perhaps the timing -- he isn't sticking out the year and he has no promise of a smooth path to a starting job elsewhere -- but that's about it.
So why is Nick Saban wrong? Because everyone simply doesn't have to do as he says. Is it frustrating that a coach "never knows" who will stay and go and therefore a coach is frequently on edge about what his depth chart at QB can be? Maybe. But the coach can alleviate that pressure through building solid relationships with his QBs and engaging in meaningful conversations. That's not to say that Saban didn't try that or do that in his mind, but that's not always the case. It's hard to think of the term "poor Alabama" in this situation. The Crimson Tide will get over this setback. I do feel for the QB, because, well, he's a kid, and kids go through a wide range of thoughts and emotions about major decisions. It may be that he's not as good as advertised, and it may be that Alabama just isn't a great fit or that he fears he'll sit behind the current starter for way too long. That's his right, and it's his right to leave. Besides, why would Saban want him in the locker room if he is this unhappy? Isn't the goal to provide for the kid's happiness first?
Sorry, Nick, but the kids have very little power as it is. College football and coaches like you have made it so. Just remember that in the absence of a greater balance of power, you create a situation where kids can feel too pressured and sometimes squeezed. Change the system and you might not get a precipitous departure. Maybe. At the end of the day, you might have gotten it right -- these are elite prospects who have a lot of people whispering into their ears and who have come to a program like Alabama on a wave of hype, whether it's justified or not. That's the world you chose, so occasionally you have to realize and come to grips with the fact that it will disappoint you.
Speculation: To program in country perhaps recruits too many of them.
Fact: Only one quarterback can play that position at a time.
Speculation: Top programs recruit many elite quarterbacks, realizing that not all can handle college, the pressure, their system and that not all improve after high school.
Fact: Quarterbacks transfer. Blake Barnett, a five-star recruit out of California, just pulled the plug on his stay at Alabama, will transfer to a junior college and then be eligible to play for an FBS program this time next year should he have the grades and credits. Read more about his story and Saban's reaction here.
Analysis: Barnett did not quit in the sense that Saban says he did. Saban gets the analysis partially right -- the kids do get all sorts of ideas in their heads about how good they are and how much they should be playing. Heck, the top programs help foster a system that creates a star system among recruits and pumps them up with all sorts of ideas as to what they can achieve at a big-name program. It's a circular system, in that that's how the big-time programs get these kids -- by pumping them up or underscoring the hype. Atop that, it used to be the case that the programs had all of the power and that a commitment meant an unbreakable bond between school and kid, even if it turned out that the kid will sit for most of his career because, well, he isn't all that good. But it also was the case that programs tried to and succeeded to run kids off the team, precisely because they weren't all that good. Today it's the case that programs cannot offer an unlimited amount of scholarships (they are limited to 85) and that scholarships are one-year renewable, which means that if a kid has a bad year, the team can "non-renew" him and cut him loose without any commitment to his education. So if a program can do that, what's wrong with Blake Barnett's departure? Perhaps the timing -- he isn't sticking out the year and he has no promise of a smooth path to a starting job elsewhere -- but that's about it.
So why is Nick Saban wrong? Because everyone simply doesn't have to do as he says. Is it frustrating that a coach "never knows" who will stay and go and therefore a coach is frequently on edge about what his depth chart at QB can be? Maybe. But the coach can alleviate that pressure through building solid relationships with his QBs and engaging in meaningful conversations. That's not to say that Saban didn't try that or do that in his mind, but that's not always the case. It's hard to think of the term "poor Alabama" in this situation. The Crimson Tide will get over this setback. I do feel for the QB, because, well, he's a kid, and kids go through a wide range of thoughts and emotions about major decisions. It may be that he's not as good as advertised, and it may be that Alabama just isn't a great fit or that he fears he'll sit behind the current starter for way too long. That's his right, and it's his right to leave. Besides, why would Saban want him in the locker room if he is this unhappy? Isn't the goal to provide for the kid's happiness first?
Sorry, Nick, but the kids have very little power as it is. College football and coaches like you have made it so. Just remember that in the absence of a greater balance of power, you create a situation where kids can feel too pressured and sometimes squeezed. Change the system and you might not get a precipitous departure. Maybe. At the end of the day, you might have gotten it right -- these are elite prospects who have a lot of people whispering into their ears and who have come to a program like Alabama on a wave of hype, whether it's justified or not. That's the world you chose, so occasionally you have to realize and come to grips with the fact that it will disappoint you.
Monday, September 19, 2016
On Sam Bradford
Great game last night.
Showed that he can begin to quarterback a good team.
Makes Vikings' management look good so far for making the trade.
Key things:
1. Can he continue to play at this level?
2. Can he stay healthy?
The further the Vikings go, the better the trade will look for them.
The better Carson Wentz does, the better the trade will look for the Eagles.
Neither QB, of course, should be judged on a single data point.
But the Vikings must have liked what they saw last night.
As for the Eagles' brass, well, every time Bradford goes out and has a good game, a piece of them dies.
Showed that he can begin to quarterback a good team.
Makes Vikings' management look good so far for making the trade.
Key things:
1. Can he continue to play at this level?
2. Can he stay healthy?
The further the Vikings go, the better the trade will look for them.
The better Carson Wentz does, the better the trade will look for the Eagles.
Neither QB, of course, should be judged on a single data point.
But the Vikings must have liked what they saw last night.
As for the Eagles' brass, well, every time Bradford goes out and has a good game, a piece of them dies.
Friday, September 16, 2016
On Carson Wentz
I had planned a longer post, but figured I'd write just a few basic points on the topic:
- Wonderful first game.
- It was an NFL game.
- It was against the Browns, one of the worst teams in the NFL.
- He played in a pro system at North Dakota State and it shows why.
- Funny how more low star recruits do better in college and have pro potential than higher star recruits.
- He made some nice throws for touchdowns.
- It was his first game, a very good start.
- He is a rookie.
- There will be film on him going forward.
- He will get to watch film and study defenses too.
- He will make mistakes. There will be times where he gets sacked when he should have gotten rid of the ball or when he throws an interception when he should have thrown it into the ground or out of bounds.
- His line is okay for now but will not be as good if Lane Johnson gets suspended.
- The Eagles will need to sustain a running game to help enable the passing game and vice versa.
- He is a rookie.
- He will make mistakes.
- Patience should be the operative word for all in the Philadelphia region.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Last Chance U
Netflix just dropped this documentary series about the 2015 season of the East Mississippi Lions, a juco football team that is ranked in the top ten and has been for a long while. EM is located in Scooba, Mississippi, a town of about 760 people. The roster is populated with kids who dropped out, flunked out or were kicked out of DI programs or kids whose academics were poor enough that they couldn't qualify for admission in the first place. Those featured on the documentary are there to do one thing -- play football. And then draw notice from recruiters for Division I schools and hopefully get into "the league."
Before anyone scoffs, the show points out that EM has 12 alums in the NFL, and the average DI school has about 7. The combination of the circumstances of the players, the backwater nature of Scooba and the huge personality of the head coach, Buddy Stephens, creates a good show. While the primary subject of the show is football, the show also is about life. And, in many cases, how out of balance the lives of many of these kids are. As one assistant coach pointed out, the kids should focus on their education because the average career in the NFL is about 1.5 years (I think that is probably a fraction over three).
But they don't. The featured kids prefer to do a lot of what teenagers do -- sleep, party, hang out, look for girls, talk on the phone or preferably text and incessantly listen to music. Schoolwork? It's a means to an end, and they'll do the minimum so that they can get the grades to move on to their next stop. Many dream of getting to the SEC. Some will, others won't. But the featured kids seem totally unmotivated academically. To them, a scholarship means a berth on a team where they can make a difference and hopefully go pro. It does not mean an opportunity to get a good education and a decent job should the football thing not work out. Which means that if it doesn't work out, some of these kids will end up back on the street corners of where they came from, and that's risky. Why? Because the high school teammate of one of the Lions' stars couldn't figure out a way to stay at his DI school, ended up back on the streets of some small Florida city, and was gunned down within 18 months. No education and no skills equals a recipe for problems.
Some kids seem nice and likeable, others naïve, and even others selfish, entitled and not likeable. Let's remember, though, that they are just kids. But they suffer from a delusion that football can be everything and take care of their problems. Or, if they're not delusional, they might contend that it's the only thing that they can do well. It could be that they are right, but it could be that they haven't been challenged, have been passed through the system because they can play football well, and it could be that they just haven't put in nearly the effort that they do on the football field. The academic advisor has to chase after the star running back to try to keep him eligible. It's pretty frustrating, and in certain places the player would be suspended for his lack of attendance and effort. Instead, this advisor, who should be nominated for sainthood, points out that the one essay where he gave a good effort was pretty good, so why not try? The star running back mumbled an answer and gave an "aw shucks" type of look. He just doesn't like school.
The head coach, a volatile man a few cheesburgers short of a heart attack, wonders aloud whether he and his staff should be doing more to hold the kids accountable academically. But that's it -- he just wonders, all the while building up the type of record that gets a statue built for you or a stadium named after you at EM. He should remember that the one guy after whom the stadium was named in memory of whom the statue was built seemed to be remembered for being a bit nuts and for having pushed the envelope too hard. I won't spoil it, but the team can reflect the coach's moods and temper. Seeing is believing.
So what to think of the documentary series and EM? It underscores how important football is to certain cultures and how kids get put into the system, chewed up and spat out with nothing to show for it after all the years that they committed to it. The kids appear to be solely focused on football or relaxation, entitled to skate through the way they want to off the field, and yet, that's not always fair. Sure, they are in sweats a lot and have headphones on, but so do a lot of kids. What's sad is that they don't seem to have a care in the world for their futures beyond football. And if they don't care, there's only so much caring an academic advisor can do for them. I wonder what the coach thinks or will think ten years out when he sees the predicaments of some of his former players. Those predicaments will not be pretty. But will they have been worth it for a league championship or a national championship? Or if some kids make it to the league?
The documentary series is worth watching. Like a fictional counterpart, Friday Night Lights, football isn't the entire story. This series is about life. While not all of the back stories are compelling, some are riveting.
Which is as it should be.
After all, this is Last Chance U.
At least for the football players.
Before anyone scoffs, the show points out that EM has 12 alums in the NFL, and the average DI school has about 7. The combination of the circumstances of the players, the backwater nature of Scooba and the huge personality of the head coach, Buddy Stephens, creates a good show. While the primary subject of the show is football, the show also is about life. And, in many cases, how out of balance the lives of many of these kids are. As one assistant coach pointed out, the kids should focus on their education because the average career in the NFL is about 1.5 years (I think that is probably a fraction over three).
But they don't. The featured kids prefer to do a lot of what teenagers do -- sleep, party, hang out, look for girls, talk on the phone or preferably text and incessantly listen to music. Schoolwork? It's a means to an end, and they'll do the minimum so that they can get the grades to move on to their next stop. Many dream of getting to the SEC. Some will, others won't. But the featured kids seem totally unmotivated academically. To them, a scholarship means a berth on a team where they can make a difference and hopefully go pro. It does not mean an opportunity to get a good education and a decent job should the football thing not work out. Which means that if it doesn't work out, some of these kids will end up back on the street corners of where they came from, and that's risky. Why? Because the high school teammate of one of the Lions' stars couldn't figure out a way to stay at his DI school, ended up back on the streets of some small Florida city, and was gunned down within 18 months. No education and no skills equals a recipe for problems.
Some kids seem nice and likeable, others naïve, and even others selfish, entitled and not likeable. Let's remember, though, that they are just kids. But they suffer from a delusion that football can be everything and take care of their problems. Or, if they're not delusional, they might contend that it's the only thing that they can do well. It could be that they are right, but it could be that they haven't been challenged, have been passed through the system because they can play football well, and it could be that they just haven't put in nearly the effort that they do on the football field. The academic advisor has to chase after the star running back to try to keep him eligible. It's pretty frustrating, and in certain places the player would be suspended for his lack of attendance and effort. Instead, this advisor, who should be nominated for sainthood, points out that the one essay where he gave a good effort was pretty good, so why not try? The star running back mumbled an answer and gave an "aw shucks" type of look. He just doesn't like school.
The head coach, a volatile man a few cheesburgers short of a heart attack, wonders aloud whether he and his staff should be doing more to hold the kids accountable academically. But that's it -- he just wonders, all the while building up the type of record that gets a statue built for you or a stadium named after you at EM. He should remember that the one guy after whom the stadium was named in memory of whom the statue was built seemed to be remembered for being a bit nuts and for having pushed the envelope too hard. I won't spoil it, but the team can reflect the coach's moods and temper. Seeing is believing.
So what to think of the documentary series and EM? It underscores how important football is to certain cultures and how kids get put into the system, chewed up and spat out with nothing to show for it after all the years that they committed to it. The kids appear to be solely focused on football or relaxation, entitled to skate through the way they want to off the field, and yet, that's not always fair. Sure, they are in sweats a lot and have headphones on, but so do a lot of kids. What's sad is that they don't seem to have a care in the world for their futures beyond football. And if they don't care, there's only so much caring an academic advisor can do for them. I wonder what the coach thinks or will think ten years out when he sees the predicaments of some of his former players. Those predicaments will not be pretty. But will they have been worth it for a league championship or a national championship? Or if some kids make it to the league?
The documentary series is worth watching. Like a fictional counterpart, Friday Night Lights, football isn't the entire story. This series is about life. While not all of the back stories are compelling, some are riveting.
Which is as it should be.
After all, this is Last Chance U.
At least for the football players.
Monday, August 22, 2016
Olympic Dedication
I read an article the other day about one particular U.S. Olympic team. This is not a team that was featured in prime time. It is not a team that won a medal. Its sport is not one where people can play professionally anywhere in the world and make a living, let alone a lot of money. The players do play for the love of the game. And that's great.
But I am not sure that they are amateurs. It doesn't seem that they have day jobs and then drop what they're doing to join the team when an Olympic cycle begins, say a year before the games. No, it seems that they get a stipend to be on the national team, live at the national training center, and then, well, play for a long time. One of the starters was quoted as saying, "I'm 27, and I have never had a job."
Is that a good thing? If you remember the Olympics when amateurism meant something, you also recall the hypocrisy of the Iron Curtain countries, for many of their stars were in the military and their sole responsibility was playing for, in the Soviets' case, the Red Army team. So much for amateurism. In today's world, the Olympics only care about getting the very best, so no longer do you have the Belgian librarian who is the weight lifter or a school teacher who ran the 1,500. Those days are long gone; they will not return.
I don't want to sit in judgment of the 27 year-old who never has had a job and who thus far has played a kids' game for a living. My guess is that this person will go on and have a career in the sport, getting paid as a coach or as someone who can administer the national team. If that's the case, then as this person ages this person will graduate to a role where she can get reasonable compensation, benefits and the ability to contribute to her retirement. And, hell, it could be fun to play a kids' game for as long as you can without having to have a care in the world outside, well, playing the kids' game well. Sounds like good work if you can get it.
The flip side to the argument is that "are you kidding me, why postpone real life by playing a kids' game that few understand or watch for as long as you can as opposed to doing something else with your life?" And by something else, the person asking the question means, "something that is meaningful" because playing a kids' game forever doesn't seem to be meaningful. Those making this argument will say why did the person get a college degree and then dedicate her young life to this pastime, especially when the U.S. doesn't have a history of earning medals in this sport?
On the one hand, the pursuit is pure and for the love of the game and for a bond with teammates that is deep, meaningful and could last a lifetime. It's not necessarily being a cloistered monk with few possessions who achieves various levels of consciousness that the rest of us cannot begin too, but it is dedication in a very pure sense. You can make the argument that this is what certain academics do; they study a rare subject that gets little attention for the sake of doing it and for coming up with the type of discovery that might be able to shed light on civilization in a meaningful way. Failing that, they would argue that the mere doing the work is pure and sets an example for all that purity in study has meaning, sometimes deeply so.
I don't know how I feel about this. I don't walk in this person's shoes. To a degree, I'm envious -- not having worked, wow! To a degree, I'm aghast -- not having worked, what, do you live in a bubble?
The past 17 days left this relatively anonymous athlete on a relatively anonymous team with a chance to gain some temporary notoriety -- as a team -- had they won a medal. They fell short, and now they'll retreat to their national team headquarters, happy that they fared better than they did in London, but wondering about the next four years. Not having worked until your mid-20's is one thing, but when you're in your early 30's and don't have a working track record, it makes it all the more difficult to get that first job. We're not talking about an athlete with any endorsement money; she is not a swimmer. We're talking about someone much further down on the sports food chain.
The rest of us will say we enjoyed the Olympics, even with the air brushing over Rio's substantial problems, enjoyed how well the U.S. did (overlooking that the games increasingly seem to be a contest for the industrialized, nationalistic countries) and how well certain individuals fared -- Biles, Ledecky, Phelps among them.
And we will forget the rest.
That those who toil in relative anonymity continue on is testimony to their determination and perseverance. There is something to the purity of it all.
At least up until the point where it seems to be a bit extreme and pushes one's life out of balance.
But I am not sure that they are amateurs. It doesn't seem that they have day jobs and then drop what they're doing to join the team when an Olympic cycle begins, say a year before the games. No, it seems that they get a stipend to be on the national team, live at the national training center, and then, well, play for a long time. One of the starters was quoted as saying, "I'm 27, and I have never had a job."
Is that a good thing? If you remember the Olympics when amateurism meant something, you also recall the hypocrisy of the Iron Curtain countries, for many of their stars were in the military and their sole responsibility was playing for, in the Soviets' case, the Red Army team. So much for amateurism. In today's world, the Olympics only care about getting the very best, so no longer do you have the Belgian librarian who is the weight lifter or a school teacher who ran the 1,500. Those days are long gone; they will not return.
I don't want to sit in judgment of the 27 year-old who never has had a job and who thus far has played a kids' game for a living. My guess is that this person will go on and have a career in the sport, getting paid as a coach or as someone who can administer the national team. If that's the case, then as this person ages this person will graduate to a role where she can get reasonable compensation, benefits and the ability to contribute to her retirement. And, hell, it could be fun to play a kids' game for as long as you can without having to have a care in the world outside, well, playing the kids' game well. Sounds like good work if you can get it.
The flip side to the argument is that "are you kidding me, why postpone real life by playing a kids' game that few understand or watch for as long as you can as opposed to doing something else with your life?" And by something else, the person asking the question means, "something that is meaningful" because playing a kids' game forever doesn't seem to be meaningful. Those making this argument will say why did the person get a college degree and then dedicate her young life to this pastime, especially when the U.S. doesn't have a history of earning medals in this sport?
On the one hand, the pursuit is pure and for the love of the game and for a bond with teammates that is deep, meaningful and could last a lifetime. It's not necessarily being a cloistered monk with few possessions who achieves various levels of consciousness that the rest of us cannot begin too, but it is dedication in a very pure sense. You can make the argument that this is what certain academics do; they study a rare subject that gets little attention for the sake of doing it and for coming up with the type of discovery that might be able to shed light on civilization in a meaningful way. Failing that, they would argue that the mere doing the work is pure and sets an example for all that purity in study has meaning, sometimes deeply so.
I don't know how I feel about this. I don't walk in this person's shoes. To a degree, I'm envious -- not having worked, wow! To a degree, I'm aghast -- not having worked, what, do you live in a bubble?
The past 17 days left this relatively anonymous athlete on a relatively anonymous team with a chance to gain some temporary notoriety -- as a team -- had they won a medal. They fell short, and now they'll retreat to their national team headquarters, happy that they fared better than they did in London, but wondering about the next four years. Not having worked until your mid-20's is one thing, but when you're in your early 30's and don't have a working track record, it makes it all the more difficult to get that first job. We're not talking about an athlete with any endorsement money; she is not a swimmer. We're talking about someone much further down on the sports food chain.
The rest of us will say we enjoyed the Olympics, even with the air brushing over Rio's substantial problems, enjoyed how well the U.S. did (overlooking that the games increasingly seem to be a contest for the industrialized, nationalistic countries) and how well certain individuals fared -- Biles, Ledecky, Phelps among them.
And we will forget the rest.
That those who toil in relative anonymity continue on is testimony to their determination and perseverance. There is something to the purity of it all.
At least up until the point where it seems to be a bit extreme and pushes one's life out of balance.
Friday, August 19, 2016
Ironic Passive Aggressivenes by NFL Players
The NFL players have a union. The NFL players have a collective bargaining agreement. The NFL players are angry with Commissioner Roger Goodell for acting under that collective bargaining agreement. Those players implicated in the Al-Jazeera PED scandal are angry that they have to comply with the league's investigation or else face suspension.
The question to all of these issues is the following: why?
The reason I ask is because the players have a collective bargaining agreement. Their protests, frustrations and anger result from actions that the league has carried out or may carry out under that agreement. For example, certain players who have not spoken to the league as a result of the Al-Jazeera allegations are annoyed that they have to cooperate with the league. Put very simply, their anger and frustrations are wrong and misplaced.
Employers in this day and age are obligated -- perhaps by law if not policy of an at-times very unforgiving Department of Justice -- to investigate compliance complaints. The Al-Jazeera allegations are serious enough that the league needs to investigate them. And forget about the law, even. PEDs can give a player and his team an unfair advantage. By the league's own rules, such alleged misconduct must be investigated. A corollary to that is a fundamental tenet of employment law -- if you don't cooperate with an investigation, you get fired. By the way, refusing to cooperate because you might want to take the Fifth Amendment in a corresponding criminal investigation won't help an employee. In many cases, employers fire those employees too.
The players to a degree are lucky that they have a union and a collective bargaining agreement and should work with NFLPA leadership to maximize their benefits and protections under it. But to the extent that the league is doing what it is doing and the CBA permits it (such as letting Commissioner Goodell -- without third-party review -- mete out discipline), they players should grin and bear it. That's what they signed up for.
So what's their remedy? The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (in what explicably was not a unanimous decision) upheld the CBA with respect to Tom Brady, despite all of the Patriots' public relations and the NFLPA's public relations arguing that this was an injustice. Whether or not people liked the decision, again, it fell squarely under the CBA. The players made a huge deal out of the Brady matter, but their frustration was misplaced.
Instead of focusing their anger on the league and the commissioner, they should direct their comments to their union head, DeMaurice Smith, and urge him to develop a dialogue with the Commissioner to improve upon some of the things in the CBA. Look, even if the league has a right to do certain things under the CBA, it also worries about its brand. Translated, the Commissioner won't always win if he enforce or takes advantage of the CBA to the specific letter of it. Doing so would convey a lack of wisdom on his part. Atop that, Smith should try to make his points now to prepare the Commissioner and the owners for what the players might ask for in the CBA negotiations the next time around. That would be a start.
But for the players to get the changes that they seek, they might need to strike and strike for a good period of time. Historically, the owners have won to a much greater degree than in baseball (which has the most successful union in the history of unions) and basketball. The reasons seem to be two-fold. First, the average football player's career is a fraction over three years, which means that the average player really cannot afford to strike, especially for an issue that will be unlikely to affect him. Second, football is a sport populated with players who have been told what to do since age 6 or 8 or whenever Pee Wee football starts. The football player population seems less likely to talk back to its ownership than other populations do in other sports.
DeMaurice Smith and his executive committee would be well-served to get the messaging right. They need to keep their membership focused on playing well and growing the revenue in the NFL. They need to let them know that they are pushing on the key issues that they want to improve upon. And they need to show progress on those key issues. What they also should do is try to focus the players on anything but letting issues that they bargained for in the current CBA eat at them to the point of distraction. That distraction will not improve the situation or make any individual player play better.
Whether they like the ownership groups, the Commissioner or the league, well, that's up to them. But they'd be better suited being aggressive in their discussions and negotiations than in public displays of anger and frustration that usually only get the better of those who are angry and frustrated.
The question to all of these issues is the following: why?
The reason I ask is because the players have a collective bargaining agreement. Their protests, frustrations and anger result from actions that the league has carried out or may carry out under that agreement. For example, certain players who have not spoken to the league as a result of the Al-Jazeera allegations are annoyed that they have to cooperate with the league. Put very simply, their anger and frustrations are wrong and misplaced.
Employers in this day and age are obligated -- perhaps by law if not policy of an at-times very unforgiving Department of Justice -- to investigate compliance complaints. The Al-Jazeera allegations are serious enough that the league needs to investigate them. And forget about the law, even. PEDs can give a player and his team an unfair advantage. By the league's own rules, such alleged misconduct must be investigated. A corollary to that is a fundamental tenet of employment law -- if you don't cooperate with an investigation, you get fired. By the way, refusing to cooperate because you might want to take the Fifth Amendment in a corresponding criminal investigation won't help an employee. In many cases, employers fire those employees too.
The players to a degree are lucky that they have a union and a collective bargaining agreement and should work with NFLPA leadership to maximize their benefits and protections under it. But to the extent that the league is doing what it is doing and the CBA permits it (such as letting Commissioner Goodell -- without third-party review -- mete out discipline), they players should grin and bear it. That's what they signed up for.
So what's their remedy? The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (in what explicably was not a unanimous decision) upheld the CBA with respect to Tom Brady, despite all of the Patriots' public relations and the NFLPA's public relations arguing that this was an injustice. Whether or not people liked the decision, again, it fell squarely under the CBA. The players made a huge deal out of the Brady matter, but their frustration was misplaced.
Instead of focusing their anger on the league and the commissioner, they should direct their comments to their union head, DeMaurice Smith, and urge him to develop a dialogue with the Commissioner to improve upon some of the things in the CBA. Look, even if the league has a right to do certain things under the CBA, it also worries about its brand. Translated, the Commissioner won't always win if he enforce or takes advantage of the CBA to the specific letter of it. Doing so would convey a lack of wisdom on his part. Atop that, Smith should try to make his points now to prepare the Commissioner and the owners for what the players might ask for in the CBA negotiations the next time around. That would be a start.
But for the players to get the changes that they seek, they might need to strike and strike for a good period of time. Historically, the owners have won to a much greater degree than in baseball (which has the most successful union in the history of unions) and basketball. The reasons seem to be two-fold. First, the average football player's career is a fraction over three years, which means that the average player really cannot afford to strike, especially for an issue that will be unlikely to affect him. Second, football is a sport populated with players who have been told what to do since age 6 or 8 or whenever Pee Wee football starts. The football player population seems less likely to talk back to its ownership than other populations do in other sports.
DeMaurice Smith and his executive committee would be well-served to get the messaging right. They need to keep their membership focused on playing well and growing the revenue in the NFL. They need to let them know that they are pushing on the key issues that they want to improve upon. And they need to show progress on those key issues. What they also should do is try to focus the players on anything but letting issues that they bargained for in the current CBA eat at them to the point of distraction. That distraction will not improve the situation or make any individual player play better.
Whether they like the ownership groups, the Commissioner or the league, well, that's up to them. But they'd be better suited being aggressive in their discussions and negotiations than in public displays of anger and frustration that usually only get the better of those who are angry and frustrated.
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Ugly Americans
I enjoyed the U.S. Swim Team's performance at the Rio Games very much. The team exceeded expectations and looked like they had a good time doing it. Young swimmers excelled, as did the tattooed grizzled veteran, Anthony Ervin, who had the swim of his life in the 50-meter race. It was great to watch.
And that should have been it, at least until a couple of nights ago when a male quartet that star swimmer Ryan Lochte led did something stupid that caused them to have a run in with a private security guard who seemingly was right to inquire as to what Lochte and his three teammates were doing at the gas station in the wee hours. Turns out, they needed to use the rest room, and, finding it locked, they kicked the door in. The guard or owner, I don't recall, asked for some compensation to fix the door. The swimmers offered $20, and that should have been it. Basically, a bunch of young men (although Lochte, at 32, shouldn't come close to getting the "college boys will be boys" leniency) were out too late and did something stupid. That probably should have been it.
Except that Lochte fabricated a story, the motivation for which was unclear, that Rio cops pulled over their tax, held them up at gunpoint and took their wallets. That story baffled the local authorities, who were reeling enough because of some of the crime that transpired during the games, some of it very violent. Lochte's and his teammates stories changed, didn't square up, and it didn't seem plausible to those investigating Lochte's story that the robbers would have left the swimmers with their cell phones. That's not the modus operandi of robbers in Rio, apparently. In addition, Lochte seemed way too nonchalant about having a gun put up to his forehead (something that did not happen), and video at the gas station and then from the Olympic Village seemed to indicate that the returning swimmers were in pretty good moods despite what allegedly happened.
What's puzzling is why Lochte felt a need to concoct his story unless as a means to mollify whoever was monitoring the whereabouts of the swimmers. But why he felt a need to do so after the swim races were over is baffling because it is not as though USA Swimming or the USOC would suspend him for missing curfew. Instead, as can happen with webs of lies, the story took on a life of its own, and what it now appears to be is that unaccountable and entitled, privileged young Americans tried to impugn the integrity of the local safety situation to cover their rear ends because they made a mistake. What Lochte and his buddies failed to assess was the degree with which the Rio authorities would fight back to challenge the story. After all, the story drew international headlines, the types that might continue to scare away tourists because, well, if robberies could happen to these big, strong guys they could happen to anyone.
At one level, the whole thing is stupid, young people when they get together and party together can do stupid stuff, and the whole thing shall pass. At another level, and at a time where Brazil is having too many down moments and the U.S. can suffer from looking privileged and entitled, the whole story looks bad. It piles on another bad episode on Rio, and, at the same time, tarnishes to some degree the accomplishments of the entire U.S. swim team. After all, if those four are representative of the others, then what type of entitled prima donnas do we have on our swim team? (Note: similar accusations could fly toward the U.S. women's soccer team, if only because of the post-loss comments of Hope Solo, who called the Swedish team cowards. That doesn't make the U.S. women's team a collection of sore losers, but it does call into question why it has tolerated Solo's lack of good judgment and temperament over the years -- it can set a pall over the entire team).
Lochte left Brazil, two others swimmers were pulled off their plane home and another never got the chance to go to the airport. For this thing to end peacefully and in the spirit of accountability, Lochte and his teammates should issue and apology. And Lochte also should write a check -- he has a lot of endorsement money -- for say $25,000 to $50,000 to a local Rio youth sports program as a good will gesture to help patch things up. But if he remains silent and stays in the U.S. without making this right, then you have to wonder about him. And if he were to remain on the U.S. swim team should he not apologize and make things right, well, then that would say something about USA Swimming too.
Lochte picked his sin; he cannot choose his consequences. He and his teammates would be well-suited to make this a non-story going forward as quickly as they can.
And that should have been it, at least until a couple of nights ago when a male quartet that star swimmer Ryan Lochte led did something stupid that caused them to have a run in with a private security guard who seemingly was right to inquire as to what Lochte and his three teammates were doing at the gas station in the wee hours. Turns out, they needed to use the rest room, and, finding it locked, they kicked the door in. The guard or owner, I don't recall, asked for some compensation to fix the door. The swimmers offered $20, and that should have been it. Basically, a bunch of young men (although Lochte, at 32, shouldn't come close to getting the "college boys will be boys" leniency) were out too late and did something stupid. That probably should have been it.
Except that Lochte fabricated a story, the motivation for which was unclear, that Rio cops pulled over their tax, held them up at gunpoint and took their wallets. That story baffled the local authorities, who were reeling enough because of some of the crime that transpired during the games, some of it very violent. Lochte's and his teammates stories changed, didn't square up, and it didn't seem plausible to those investigating Lochte's story that the robbers would have left the swimmers with their cell phones. That's not the modus operandi of robbers in Rio, apparently. In addition, Lochte seemed way too nonchalant about having a gun put up to his forehead (something that did not happen), and video at the gas station and then from the Olympic Village seemed to indicate that the returning swimmers were in pretty good moods despite what allegedly happened.
What's puzzling is why Lochte felt a need to concoct his story unless as a means to mollify whoever was monitoring the whereabouts of the swimmers. But why he felt a need to do so after the swim races were over is baffling because it is not as though USA Swimming or the USOC would suspend him for missing curfew. Instead, as can happen with webs of lies, the story took on a life of its own, and what it now appears to be is that unaccountable and entitled, privileged young Americans tried to impugn the integrity of the local safety situation to cover their rear ends because they made a mistake. What Lochte and his buddies failed to assess was the degree with which the Rio authorities would fight back to challenge the story. After all, the story drew international headlines, the types that might continue to scare away tourists because, well, if robberies could happen to these big, strong guys they could happen to anyone.
At one level, the whole thing is stupid, young people when they get together and party together can do stupid stuff, and the whole thing shall pass. At another level, and at a time where Brazil is having too many down moments and the U.S. can suffer from looking privileged and entitled, the whole story looks bad. It piles on another bad episode on Rio, and, at the same time, tarnishes to some degree the accomplishments of the entire U.S. swim team. After all, if those four are representative of the others, then what type of entitled prima donnas do we have on our swim team? (Note: similar accusations could fly toward the U.S. women's soccer team, if only because of the post-loss comments of Hope Solo, who called the Swedish team cowards. That doesn't make the U.S. women's team a collection of sore losers, but it does call into question why it has tolerated Solo's lack of good judgment and temperament over the years -- it can set a pall over the entire team).
Lochte left Brazil, two others swimmers were pulled off their plane home and another never got the chance to go to the airport. For this thing to end peacefully and in the spirit of accountability, Lochte and his teammates should issue and apology. And Lochte also should write a check -- he has a lot of endorsement money -- for say $25,000 to $50,000 to a local Rio youth sports program as a good will gesture to help patch things up. But if he remains silent and stays in the U.S. without making this right, then you have to wonder about him. And if he were to remain on the U.S. swim team should he not apologize and make things right, well, then that would say something about USA Swimming too.
Lochte picked his sin; he cannot choose his consequences. He and his teammates would be well-suited to make this a non-story going forward as quickly as they can.
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Can the Summer Games Still be a Failure for the United States? Yes, They Can Be. . .
What, am I Oscar the Grouch? The Grinch? Scrooge?
Hardly. And it's hard to argue with the numbers. The U.S. has a huge lead in medals and the success of the swim and gymnastics teams has been terrific. The track team remains a work in progress.
That said, I will posit that the games still could be a failure for the Americans for one reason and one reason alone -- the U.S. Men's Basketball Team. Now, that's not to take anything away from swimming, gymnastics and women's basketball, and heck the women's soccer team bowed out and no one in Washington D.C. declared a state of national mourning. But, basketball is our game, and men's basketball is particularly our game. And I do remember when the U.S. went into mourning in 1972 for, among other reasons, the ripoff that the men's team suffered in the final against the Soviet Union. People were glum about that loss for years, and to this day no one on that team will accept a silver medal for the crime that the team suffered at the hands of utterly incompetent if not corrupt officials. (And there have been other disappointments since then as well).
Still. . . the U.S. men's basketball team is supposed to represent that the best America has to offer in terms of superlative skills. We invented this game, and we're supposed to own it. If we lose, we lose another sense of our invincibility. Sure, it's nice to win all of those other medals, and we take great pride not only in the accomplishments but in the stories of the people behind those great works. That said, if we lose in men's basketball, well, the Olympics will not have been a success for the U.S.
No pressure, of course, but it is time for the leaders on the team to emerge and to encourage more concentration, more sharing of the ball, more help defense and more movement without the ball.
This is our game. We have some of the best players in the world on our team. We should do better.
We should win the gold.
Hardly. And it's hard to argue with the numbers. The U.S. has a huge lead in medals and the success of the swim and gymnastics teams has been terrific. The track team remains a work in progress.
That said, I will posit that the games still could be a failure for the Americans for one reason and one reason alone -- the U.S. Men's Basketball Team. Now, that's not to take anything away from swimming, gymnastics and women's basketball, and heck the women's soccer team bowed out and no one in Washington D.C. declared a state of national mourning. But, basketball is our game, and men's basketball is particularly our game. And I do remember when the U.S. went into mourning in 1972 for, among other reasons, the ripoff that the men's team suffered in the final against the Soviet Union. People were glum about that loss for years, and to this day no one on that team will accept a silver medal for the crime that the team suffered at the hands of utterly incompetent if not corrupt officials. (And there have been other disappointments since then as well).
Still. . . the U.S. men's basketball team is supposed to represent that the best America has to offer in terms of superlative skills. We invented this game, and we're supposed to own it. If we lose, we lose another sense of our invincibility. Sure, it's nice to win all of those other medals, and we take great pride not only in the accomplishments but in the stories of the people behind those great works. That said, if we lose in men's basketball, well, the Olympics will not have been a success for the U.S.
No pressure, of course, but it is time for the leaders on the team to emerge and to encourage more concentration, more sharing of the ball, more help defense and more movement without the ball.
This is our game. We have some of the best players in the world on our team. We should do better.
We should win the gold.
U.S. Men's Olympic Basketball Team
The non-Americans seem to work the ball inside out and outside in and play help defense.
The Americans try to will their talent to win, and their talent is considerable enough that they should win the gold medal.
That said, I agree with the pundits, most prominently Charles Barkley, who offered that whoever constructed this team failed to do a good job, because with the exception of DeAndre Jordan the team is populated with players who need the ball to be effective. And because of that, you do not see a lot more than isolations and one-on-one play. You certainly do not see the off-the-ball movement that the other international teams show or that, among others, the Warriors and Spurs have shown over the years.
The team also lacks leadership. LeBron can coax, cajole and even coerce his teammates to greater heights, if for no other reason than he takes care of the little things and nothing seems to be too little not to warrant his attention. The team seems to defer to Carmelo Anthony as its leader. I'm sure Carmelo has his bright points, but he also has a reputation for being a shoot-first player whose defense is not his strong point. I thought that Paul George might have played more of a leadership role, but clearly there is something missing. Call it team defense, call it movement without the ball, call it sharing the ball, call it focus, call it something. These players come from the best league in the world, and yet they are eking out victories against teams with much less talent.
Will they win the gold? Probably? Is this a huge deal? Probably not. But it does go to show you that when you craft a team, it's a good idea to get some players better suited to international play and to the basic concepts of ball movement and team defense.
The Americans try to will their talent to win, and their talent is considerable enough that they should win the gold medal.
That said, I agree with the pundits, most prominently Charles Barkley, who offered that whoever constructed this team failed to do a good job, because with the exception of DeAndre Jordan the team is populated with players who need the ball to be effective. And because of that, you do not see a lot more than isolations and one-on-one play. You certainly do not see the off-the-ball movement that the other international teams show or that, among others, the Warriors and Spurs have shown over the years.
The team also lacks leadership. LeBron can coax, cajole and even coerce his teammates to greater heights, if for no other reason than he takes care of the little things and nothing seems to be too little not to warrant his attention. The team seems to defer to Carmelo Anthony as its leader. I'm sure Carmelo has his bright points, but he also has a reputation for being a shoot-first player whose defense is not his strong point. I thought that Paul George might have played more of a leadership role, but clearly there is something missing. Call it team defense, call it movement without the ball, call it sharing the ball, call it focus, call it something. These players come from the best league in the world, and yet they are eking out victories against teams with much less talent.
Will they win the gold? Probably? Is this a huge deal? Probably not. But it does go to show you that when you craft a team, it's a good idea to get some players better suited to international play and to the basic concepts of ball movement and team defense.
Chase Utley's Return to Philadelphia
A standing ovation that lasted almost two minutes.
A tip of the cap from longtime teammate Ryan Howard.
A solo home run that warranted a curtain call.
A grand slam that also warranted a curtain call.
A home run by Howard, too.
Two home runs and 5 RBIs in Philadelphia on his first trip there as a visiting player; he had never done this while playing in Philadelphia.
Amidst the Olympics, still the lead story on Sports Center.
Sometimes things converge and you get a beautiful moment or a series of moments that become a beautiful chapter.
Last night at the Bank was one of those times.
As Harry Kalas once famously said, "Chase Utley, you are the man."
Great night.
A tip of the cap from longtime teammate Ryan Howard.
A solo home run that warranted a curtain call.
A grand slam that also warranted a curtain call.
A home run by Howard, too.
Two home runs and 5 RBIs in Philadelphia on his first trip there as a visiting player; he had never done this while playing in Philadelphia.
Amidst the Olympics, still the lead story on Sports Center.
Sometimes things converge and you get a beautiful moment or a series of moments that become a beautiful chapter.
Last night at the Bank was one of those times.
As Harry Kalas once famously said, "Chase Utley, you are the man."
Great night.
Tuesday, August 09, 2016
A-Rod's Retirement Has Gotten Me Thinking
Alex Rodriguez retired with a yawn last week. Sure, some Yankees' fans will pay way too much to say that they saw the great A-Rod in his very last game. Somehow, those fans' contentions will pale in comparison to the fans who say they paid a lot to say farewell to a true Yankee all-time great, Derek Jeter.
A-Rod's problems are well-chronicled, as are those of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro, none of whom are getting into the Hall of Fame any time soon. A-Rod surely will join them on the bench, forever perhaps awaiting his turn for induction. And the conventional wisdom is that these fellows cheated, that they don't deserve to be in the Hall.
I get all that and have written about the same. Their shortcomings, no, transgressions, helped give me excitement that I didn't deserve. Was my life so out of whack that I needed to see steroid-pumped up men whack the ball more often and farther than at any time in Major League history save a live-ball era in the 1920's? No, not really, because I do recall having a conversation with my late father-in-law about McGwire's and Sosa's chase of Roger Maris's record and offering that when all was said and done, it would come out that they were using steroids and there would be a scandal. He somewhat scolded me for being cynical, but later did admit that I was right.
And that's part of the problem. I didn't want to be right. But what's worse than that is that if I saw it and spoke about it, others who were closer to the scene should have too. But they didn't, and they didn't apologize for their transgressions, either. They defend themselves by saying that they didn't have any proof, that they heard things, but that they didn't have enough to go on to write the story because people's reputations were at stake, or something to that effect. Perhaps, but they also fail to admit that they could have gotten their paper's investigative reporters on the trail in real time or that they feared becoming pariahs within their own profession and losing access to some great theater had they protested at all. What's even worse is that many of these same people cast votes for the Hall of Fame.
That's right, we're talking about the sportswriters. None of them lost their jobs over the steroids era or had their credibility and reputation publicly ridiculed. In fact, some of them are more prominent now than ever before, and all vote for the Hall of Fame. So it stands to reason, by my logic, that if those guys fanned on reporting the scandal and didn't suffer any consequences on the job and somehow still can vote for the Hall of Fame, that it's a bit self-righteous for them to shun the people who helped them earn their (somewhat undeserved) reputations and gave them a lot of exciting things to cover. So, how can they in good conscious pass judgment on the steroids users when they themselves benefited from it. Put differently, how hypocritical can they be?
On the one hand, if they deny access to the steroids users, then shouldn't they simply resign from their positions as Hall of Fame voters because they whiffed too? On the other hand, if they vote for the steroids users, while they might be condoning steroids use, aren't they basically putting a blanket and punctuation mark on an era where everyone failed the game -- owners (who loved the money rolling in), players, writers -- all of whom had one of their worst eras in the history of the sport?
It's an awful situation, for sure, a low moment for baseball. The writers let the game down too. That's not nearly as bad as what the players did, but a blind man could have seen that baseball players were a lot larger then and that the numbers some people were putting up were statistically significantly above and beyond what others in prior eras had put up.
I don't know if this new revelation warrants a "yes" vote for the steroids users. I just would feel much more comfortable about the whole situation if those who blew the coverage still didn't figure so prominently into who gets into the Hall of Fame.
A-Rod's problems are well-chronicled, as are those of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro, none of whom are getting into the Hall of Fame any time soon. A-Rod surely will join them on the bench, forever perhaps awaiting his turn for induction. And the conventional wisdom is that these fellows cheated, that they don't deserve to be in the Hall.
I get all that and have written about the same. Their shortcomings, no, transgressions, helped give me excitement that I didn't deserve. Was my life so out of whack that I needed to see steroid-pumped up men whack the ball more often and farther than at any time in Major League history save a live-ball era in the 1920's? No, not really, because I do recall having a conversation with my late father-in-law about McGwire's and Sosa's chase of Roger Maris's record and offering that when all was said and done, it would come out that they were using steroids and there would be a scandal. He somewhat scolded me for being cynical, but later did admit that I was right.
And that's part of the problem. I didn't want to be right. But what's worse than that is that if I saw it and spoke about it, others who were closer to the scene should have too. But they didn't, and they didn't apologize for their transgressions, either. They defend themselves by saying that they didn't have any proof, that they heard things, but that they didn't have enough to go on to write the story because people's reputations were at stake, or something to that effect. Perhaps, but they also fail to admit that they could have gotten their paper's investigative reporters on the trail in real time or that they feared becoming pariahs within their own profession and losing access to some great theater had they protested at all. What's even worse is that many of these same people cast votes for the Hall of Fame.
That's right, we're talking about the sportswriters. None of them lost their jobs over the steroids era or had their credibility and reputation publicly ridiculed. In fact, some of them are more prominent now than ever before, and all vote for the Hall of Fame. So it stands to reason, by my logic, that if those guys fanned on reporting the scandal and didn't suffer any consequences on the job and somehow still can vote for the Hall of Fame, that it's a bit self-righteous for them to shun the people who helped them earn their (somewhat undeserved) reputations and gave them a lot of exciting things to cover. So, how can they in good conscious pass judgment on the steroids users when they themselves benefited from it. Put differently, how hypocritical can they be?
On the one hand, if they deny access to the steroids users, then shouldn't they simply resign from their positions as Hall of Fame voters because they whiffed too? On the other hand, if they vote for the steroids users, while they might be condoning steroids use, aren't they basically putting a blanket and punctuation mark on an era where everyone failed the game -- owners (who loved the money rolling in), players, writers -- all of whom had one of their worst eras in the history of the sport?
It's an awful situation, for sure, a low moment for baseball. The writers let the game down too. That's not nearly as bad as what the players did, but a blind man could have seen that baseball players were a lot larger then and that the numbers some people were putting up were statistically significantly above and beyond what others in prior eras had put up.
I don't know if this new revelation warrants a "yes" vote for the steroids users. I just would feel much more comfortable about the whole situation if those who blew the coverage still didn't figure so prominently into who gets into the Hall of Fame.
Tuesday, August 02, 2016
Let's Find a Few Permanent Venues for the Olympics
The Olympic Stadium in Barcelona lies dormant. Montreal went into so much debt to host the 1976 Olympics that it took 30 years to pay it off. The Sochi Olympics were iffy in their execution, and Rio looks to be a nightmare. You only have to be as dedicated and single-minded (or as crazy) to put up with the pollution that the waterborne athletes must. What's worse, the IOC tries to extract a lot of high-minded commitments when soliciting bids, doubling down on the irony of the whole thing given that the IOC usually starts operating from somewhere just barely north of the gutter.
So what's the answer? In order not to bankrupt the entire world for games when so many live beneath the poverty level, and in order to have good, modern facilities, good accommodations for visitors and a safe environment for all, the IOC simply should focus on six venues that would rotate every twelve years -- three for winter games and three for summer games. Perhaps they could host various competitions during intervals to raise some funds. I don't know where those should be or what the process should be for hosting them, but they will get built -- with support from the IOC and its member federations -- and stay current. Period.
The Rio debacle commands no less. Brazil has a whole roster of problems that go beyond whether there are good shower curtains for the Australian Olympic team. Their economy is a mess, their government is a mess, crime in urban areas is awful and the country should strive to have many fewer people living in favelas. So what do they do? They go out and first host the World Cup, which went off surprisingly well, and now the Olympics, where pollution, crime and the Zika virus compete for front-page coverage around the world.
My guess is that critics of this proposal would say it comes from an entitled first world and that everyone should get a chance to host the games, and sorry, Yankee, if you'd be more uncomfortable in Rio than say Los Angeles (which is home to air pollution, thousands of homeless people kept out of sight and a significant gang problem), where they speak English and you might get around more easily. Perhaps I am blind to that. But what is hard to dispute are the staggering requirements for people, organization, processes and funds to pay for these games. And, if that's not in dispute, then let's work together to craft "permanent" locations that can save governments around the world money and time.
Everyone would still enjoy the Olympics. The venues could be spectacular and accessible. And safe. And have uses for well after the games conclude, including as international conclaves for all sorts of sporting competitions.
But with the IOC, who knows? They could do just the opposite -- if the price is right.
So what's the answer? In order not to bankrupt the entire world for games when so many live beneath the poverty level, and in order to have good, modern facilities, good accommodations for visitors and a safe environment for all, the IOC simply should focus on six venues that would rotate every twelve years -- three for winter games and three for summer games. Perhaps they could host various competitions during intervals to raise some funds. I don't know where those should be or what the process should be for hosting them, but they will get built -- with support from the IOC and its member federations -- and stay current. Period.
The Rio debacle commands no less. Brazil has a whole roster of problems that go beyond whether there are good shower curtains for the Australian Olympic team. Their economy is a mess, their government is a mess, crime in urban areas is awful and the country should strive to have many fewer people living in favelas. So what do they do? They go out and first host the World Cup, which went off surprisingly well, and now the Olympics, where pollution, crime and the Zika virus compete for front-page coverage around the world.
My guess is that critics of this proposal would say it comes from an entitled first world and that everyone should get a chance to host the games, and sorry, Yankee, if you'd be more uncomfortable in Rio than say Los Angeles (which is home to air pollution, thousands of homeless people kept out of sight and a significant gang problem), where they speak English and you might get around more easily. Perhaps I am blind to that. But what is hard to dispute are the staggering requirements for people, organization, processes and funds to pay for these games. And, if that's not in dispute, then let's work together to craft "permanent" locations that can save governments around the world money and time.
Everyone would still enjoy the Olympics. The venues could be spectacular and accessible. And safe. And have uses for well after the games conclude, including as international conclaves for all sorts of sporting competitions.
But with the IOC, who knows? They could do just the opposite -- if the price is right.
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