Mark Byron

The Gig is Up

California is looking to go to bat for college basketball and football players and gig-economy "contractors" in two interesting bills working their way through their legislature. Whether it helps them remains to be seen.

The one that's gotten more national attention is a move to make more free-lancers like Uber and Lyft drivers officially employees and subject to issues like minimum wage law, sick leave and other legally-mandated benefits. The side effects could include lower wages for drivers, higher prices for customers and less service in outlying areas (if demand is spotty in less congested areas, it might not justify a fixed wage per hour). 

Lots of folks are uneasy about work shifting away from conventional jobs with set hours and set pay to free-lance jobs with no guarantees. Cab drivers are the first casualty, but restaurant delivery drivers might be on the way out as well, as it might be more cost-effective for an in-house driver to be substituted for calls to Uber Eats or Doordash.

I worked delivering pizzas in my youth, but I could easily have seen myself doing "side hustles" (as one Uber ad actually referred to it) were that tech available in the 80s. Both variants leave the worker in the "precariat" as sociologists have christened the near-minimum-wage niche of the labor market with a precarious economic situation. The gig style gives more flexibility but less legal security.

If you lean libertarian, you're pro-gig, feeling the adults are adults and can make contracts as they see fit. If you're concerned about the least-of-these precariat, you're skeptical, as billion-dollar companies that can plow near-nine-figures into a ballot proposal to overturn the proposed law have an distinct ("unfair" if you're not charitable) advantage over Da Liddle Guy.

If you're both of those, you're having one of those angel-and-devil-on-shoulder conversations in your head; feel free to choose which is which at home.

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Meanwhile, another bill that would alter the face of big-time college sports is weaving its way through Sacramento-

California's state senate is expected to vote on its Fair Pay to Play Act this week, which would then put it in Newsom's hands to decide whether he will sign it into law.

The proposed legislation, which would not go into effect until 2023, would make it illegal for California schools to take away an athlete's scholarship or eligibility as punishment for accepting endorsement money. The California State Assembly approved the bill with a 73-0 vote earlier this week.

If that passes, California colleges would be force to be kicked out of the NCAA, for they'd be unable to comply with NCAA rules on players making money on ads or other endorsements. The PAC 12 would be back to the PAC 8 until they decided to snag up some Mountain West schools...

...or the NCAA would be forced to allow endorsement deals nationwide. The scandals involving Adidas and Nike playing basketball players or their parents under the table would make such deals kosher (and hopefully above-board) on the college level. It would dry up some of the endorsement money schools are making, as players could have a side-hustle on with the sneaker-mongers.

Amateur status seems overrated and very prone to hypocrisy and under-the-table money. When Olympic sports are professional and big-time college sports make schools money, the California law might make the sports cleaner.

First Betsy Ross, then Steven

Back in the good old days, Earl Warren stated that he read the sports page first, since it had news of man's achievements rather than its failures. That's not always the case these days, where you're not sure if you're watching Sport Center or Tort Center.

Miami Dolphins owner Steven Ross is in the cross-hairs for being a Trump supporter (hosting a fund-raiser) yet also funding a foundation supporting racial equality. "Hypocrite" has been flying, and Ross's exercise emporiums are getting boycotted. 

Last I checked, roughly half the country that bothered to vote voted for Trump last go-round. Yes, he didn't get a plurality of the vote, but it was still in the 40%+ range. Not everyone in that bucket is a deplorable bigot, even if the guy they voted for acts like one far too frequently.

We have two main political parties in the country. One of them is headed up by a guy who likes to pick on liberal minority-group members (and just about anyone else he doesn't like) on a regular basis. Quite a few folks who honestly strive to treat everyone fairly saw him as a better bet than his Democratic foe. I was almost one of them.

I don't know much of anything about Steven Ross and whether his foundation is merely window dressing to placate an NFL that has a large black workforce. However, he could very easily be honestly unracist, even if his response to the anthem-kneeling protests last year shows a bit of a tin ear towards racial issues.

By the way, while we're on the topic, there will be quite a few Christian folks who would normally be Republican voters who might see Joe Biden as the lesser of two evils come November 2020. Questioning those folks' faith might be about as valid as questioning Ross' color-blindness without any more evidence than who they voted for (or hosted fundraisers for).

 

Ghosts of Stepien's Past

The rich appear to be getting richer, as Cleveland is fixin' to land Kyle Korver from Atlanta. A 2019 first rounder is slated to head south in the deal, which required the Cavs to make another trade-

In a separate deal, the Cavs have agreed to send their 2017 first-round pick to Portland in exchange for their 2018 first-round pick, which the Trail Blazers already own, a source told ESPN. This would enable the Cavs to use their 2019 pick to make the deal with Atlanta. Under league rules, teams cannot trade first-round picks in consecutive seasons.

It was Cav ineptitude in trading in the 70s and early 80s that brought that rule onto the books. Ted Stepien was the owner at the time, who loved to trade draft picks for veterans. The Redskins' George Allen (the dad of the VA politico) was infamous for trading most, if not all, of his draft picks, rendering that other DC war room moot most draft days. However, Allen was a good judge of talent, getting seemingly over-the-hill players in and making the most of them; "the future is now" was the Allen mantra, and it worked nicely for the Skins.

Unlike Allen, Stepien wasn't a good judge of talent, leaving the cupboard so bare that the league let the Cavs (after Stepien sold the team) buy the rights to a post-first-round pick at one point. To keep future trade-suckers from giving away the store again, the NBA put that rule mentioned above where you have to use your first-round pick at least every other year; it became known as the Stepien Rule.

Fast forward a third of a century and Cleveland has become a powerhouse, but a rule inspired by their sad-sack days comes back to make things a notch more difficult. 

Knees and Fists

I haven't done any writing on the current rash of national-anthem protests, of which Colin Kaepernick is the lead poster boy. I'm not a big flag-waver, so I'm not all that taken aback when Kaepernick either sits down (at first) or kneels (currently) in order to pay attention to police being trigger-happy around blacks as of late.

However, other reflexively patriotic folks have a sense of sacredness to things like the Flag, the Pledge of Allegiance and proper respect for, and behavior during, the national anthem. For such folks, that behavior is like letting a hot and juicy fart in the middle of a sermon, it breaks the communitarian uniformity and sullies the civil-religion moment.

When you add old-school folks reflexively siding with the police and associate criticism of the police with anti-establishment, defiantly cocky, fry-some-bacon chanting agitators, they go into love-it-or-leave-it mode, not thinking that they might love this country, too, but want to make positive changes to how police deal with citizenry and have the system less stacked against black young men. 

If you're of a certain age, the hip-hop flavored secular swagger of BLM fans will look a bit like the Black Panthers and other Black Power types. The raised fist protest, emulating two 1968 Olympic sprinters who did so on the medal podium, hearkens back to that era. Modern civil rights mythology puts Smith and Carlos up alongside Ali and King as counter-cultural protesters, standing up to The Man and deserving credit for following their consciences. However, King preached to the better angels of white nature, while Ali and others often had an antagonistic attitude; I got the feeling that King was making an impassioned but reasoned argument while the black-power types seemed this close to flipping the honkies the bird.

That's one reason why I have much less issue with Kaepernick than with some Michigan and MSU players doing a Smith-Carlos homage as of late. Kaepernick seems to be more respectful of the non-black football fan. His take seems to be a bit simplistic and formulaic, but kneeling isn't quite as in your face as the raised fist, at least for this old-timer who lived through those 60s-70s times as a kid; the fists give "bad optics" carrying a message that might not be intended by folks who's parents weren't even born in 1968.

Black lives do matter. All lives do, but we tend to wash our hands of inner-city violence. Growing up in a very-white Midland, my mom would grumble at the local news, noting that it was either "who got shot in Flint and what house burned down in Saginaw" or "who got shot in Saginaw and what house burned down in Flint", the two towns in the media market with black, inner-city areas; the inner city was another, lesser world from Sparkle City.

Thus, there is a tendency to ignore yet another shooting of a black suspect, assuming that the perp had it coming. That's what the protesters are inelegantly trying to change. You might have a few protesters who would like to give the average white-guy the bird, but quite a few love this place to and want to improve it.

It is, at the end of the day, a song. It's not God getting dissed, or even the country, just one aspect of it that could use some improvement.

NBA commish Silver chimed in-"It would be my hope that they continue to stand for the national anthem. I think that is the appropriate thing to do." If they don't, it wouldn't be the end of the world. They either stand up or unclench their hands, take off their sweats, line up for the opening tip, and play some hoops. That's what we're there for at the end of the day; many broadcasts will go off to commercial for it, anyways.

Sacrificial Pigskin

I spent my sophomore year at Eastern Michigan in 1980, May-to-December going during the summer. The football team stunk, I went to a road game that they managed to win at Bowling Green, the front bookend of a 27-game losing streak. Their one MAC title and bowl-win came in 1987.

Basketball's been competitive, and their track team has had its moments, with Hasley Crawford winning gold in 1976's Olympic 100 meters. but football has been an issue. When I was there, it was something of a commuter school, where a number of students could drive in from the western Detroit suburbs and the others largely got out of Ypsatucky for home turf on the weekend. 

With a bad team and a campus ghost-town, not to mention a stadium a mile east of the main campus, EMU's football attendance stunk, selling out only twice during that high-water mark in the late 1980s.

Thus, EMU's program bleeds red ink. Unlike it's big brother next door who rarely struggles to round up the 110,000 screaming idiots in the Big House, EMU loses roughly $900 a student on its athletics program.

Both the faculty and the student body have thus supported scrapping the football program and dropping down half a notch to the Horizon League; they've produced some good Cinderellas in March Madness; Vaplaraiso, Cleveland State and UW-Green Bay all have had their moments, and Butler made its two Final Four runs out of the Horizon before finding greener horizons in the Big East. Oakland U and the University of Detroit would have a new rival.

Big-time sports does create an environment for donors to cough up extra cash as well as provide publicity for the program, but when success is rare and publicity is often negative, it might be hard to justify. Add to the political incorrectness of football and the need to have a raft of woman's sports programs to offset the all-male football team's scholarships for Title IX purposes, you have a sacrificial pig(skin) waiting to happen.

Alabama-Birmingham scrapped their program after the 2014 season only to have donors resurrect it; it's slated to get back in swing in 2017. I don't see EMU getting such a second life if the academics have their way here.

It's Just a Fantasy...Or Not

New York's Supreme Court has backed up the state AG in banning daily fantasy sports wagering in-state. That's a trial court; New York's Court of Appeals is the analog to the Supreme Court in the federal system and most states. I remember that from watching too many Law and Order episodes

The ruling prevents daily fantasy sports (DFS) operators from "accepting entry fees, wagers or bets from New York consumers."

With the ruling, New York joins Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada and Washington as states where fantasy sports of the daily variety are widely considered illegal.

That's an eclectic bunch of states. Nevada is the interesting one, where the sites would be legal if the got a gambling license like the sports books at the casinos do.

I've been in for-fun fantasy football leagues in the past, but dropped out of the Blogger Bowl league of the early aughts when they started having a modest entry fee; however, it was more having the team management eating into my free time that was the catalyst rather than the money.

The daily games do lean more towards a gambling application than the ongoing games, as you're essentially betting on a roster of selected players (and whole team's defenses) rather a team. There is more skill at DFS than betting on a particular game, but it seems to be a better fit in the gambling umbrella than out.

For me, DFS is becoming the tail wagging the dog in football coverage. DFS players are high-volume users of sports web sites, so catering to them makes economic sense, so much so that leagues and sports networks have bought minority stakes in the two big DFS companies.

The ESPN piece notes that a number of states, including New York, are looking at explicitly legalizing DFS. It's something that might not flow along party lines, where poverty-fighting liberals and moralist conservatives are on the con side, while libertarians, folks with a stake in the gaming industries and gambling fans on the pro side. The money is on the pro side, but crusading attorney-generals on both side of the aisle are often on the con side, especially when you add the complications of insider-wagering and a payout system skewed to a few professional players rather than the casual fan.

That last part is an interesting one that is reminiscent of futures markets, where professionals will have an information edge over the casual speculator, making futures a losing game on average for amateurs. DFS has a similar element, where the pro can do in-depth analysis of whether a player is over or under-valued, while amateurs will go by gut feel, who they like, or who their favorite fantasy web site likes. That herd mentality will skew the market in one direction, allowing the pros to make a contrarian play and win more often.

Futures is a good analogy, since it is a zero-sum game. Stock investments make money over the long haul, but futures break even with equal information and no trading costs. With asymmetrical information and commissions, it's a losing proposition for the futures amateur.   Likewise, with the pros having better info and the house getting its cut, DFS is a loser for the casual player.

Thus, there is a consumer-safety angle to this that will appeal to left-of-center folks. Add that to the usual suspects in gambling legislation and you have a contentious brew that is just starting to be dealt with. The 2015 football season has seem the DFS sites become near-ubiquitous on sports broadcasts, with large number of ads and an increased focus on player stats to play to the fantasy players. That has brought the issue to a head this fall, and will play out in state-houses and Washington for the next few years.

Georgia-Florida Beeline

I posited Mark Richt as a good fit for Rutgers, but he landed on his feet closer to home, getting hired by Miami.

Miami has something of a reputation of being the Bad Boys of college football, amped up recently with the Shapiro case. They've also been off their feed for the last decade, losing at least four games for the last decade. Richt was batting .740 at Georgia, which would point to 9-3 as a regular-season mode.

Getting Georgia-level recruits to Miami and improving the character of the program would both help, although it might scare off some folks who liked the old image. Miami isn't the Bible Belt, but the recruiting area that it hits often is; Richt might make folks who wouldn't want to see their kids off to Coral Gables in the past might have a more positive take now. Whether losing that bad-boy swagger uncools Miami even more could be the thing to watch.

Buckeyeing the Odds

Unlike this ESPN piece, I think Ohio State might still have a shot at getting the fourth playoff spot. A 10-2 Notre Dame is toast and likely looking at trips to Atlanta or Glendale for New Years, but I'd hold off on writing OSU off.

Oklahoma has finished its season and seems locked in as one team. The ACC champ will likely have another; if Clemson wins, they are the top seed, and North Carolina would scoot into the top 4 with a win, as a Power 5 12-1 conference champ will trump 11-1 and 12-1 non-champs. The Big Ten champ gets a third slot.

The SEC is the question mark. Alabama locks up that fourth spot with a win, but what do you do with Florida if they win? Would a 11-1 or 12-1 conference runner-up trump an 11-2 Florida from a weak SEC East?

Here's how OSU gets the 4th slot.

(1) Clemson wins the ACC. A 11-2 UNC is now out of the mix

(2) Iowa wins the Big 10. MSU is 11-2 and out of the mix

(3) As mentioned, Florida wins the SEC.

At that point, you have two 11-2 teams in Stanford (assuming they win the PAC 12) and Florida as conference champs, and 11-1 Baylor and Ohio State as conference also-rans. [Update 12/4 Baylor has two losses, not one, making the the following Baylor-OSU paragraph moot]

Does a conference title give you an edge over teams with one less loss? That's an intangible question without a good answer.

If not, then you can make a case for OSU over Baylor for the fourth spot. They both have quality losses (MSU and Oklahoma respectively) and quality wins (Michigan and Oklahoma State) of roughly equal proportions. The defending champ with a Heisman contender might get the edge, but it isn't a clear case.

An 12-1 Clemson would screw that scenario up, as the ACC might then back into two slots. A MSU win would present a 12-1 Iowa into that mix, but a good Spartan beat-down might make OSU look like a better choice.

OSU is likely headed to the Rose Bowl. However, a Florida win might have them rerouted.

 

 

A White Knight for the Scarlet Knights

Two news pieces hit ESPN this afternoon as the Turk makes his way through the college coaching ranks, as the regular season ended yesterday for teams who didn't make their conference title game. The first has Rutgers cleaning house, firing their coach and their AD. The second has Georgia parting ways with Mark Richt.

Both Georgia and Les Miles' LSU went 9-3 this year have three losses [Update 4:15PM-LSU is 8-3; they had a game rained out]; boosters failed to push Miles out the door, but Miles at least has a national title on his resume-

With a 145-51 record, Richt ranks second on Georgia's all-time wins list and has guided the Bulldogs to a bowl game in each of his 15 seasons at the helm. He won SEC championships in 2002 and 2005, and his teams played for league titles three other times.

Strongly religious, Richt was respected for his integrity but criticized for failing to keep pace in the SEC's recent string of seven straight national championships. Georgia's last national championship, under Vince Dooley, came in 1980.

Rutgers would give their back teeth for a .740 winning percentage. At Georgia, not bagging a national title is a firing offense.

Rutgers could also use some of that Christian integrity, having had issues with both their football and basketball coach recently. That style might not sell well outside the Bible Belt, but Rutgers could use both Richt's recruiting chops and character. They could do worse in a football coach, and probably will.

Les Miserable?

It wasn't that long ago that Les Miles was high on the wish list for Michigan fans. However, he had a good gig going at LSU, a perennial national title contender.

A few good-but-not-great years later, the boosters want to attach a $15M booster rocket to his keister and blast him out of town, offering to pay the school that figure to buy out his contract, his assistants, and the horse he rode in on.

Four years ago, they were playing for the title. Since then, it was 10-3, 10-3, 8-5 and 8-3 this year in the toughest division in the toughest conference. Given the addition of Texas A&M and improved Ole Miss and Mississippi State programs to the SEC West, that's not chopped liver. It's not Alabama, but it's not bad.

Miles tends to play a traditional offense that might look staid in comparison to some of the point-a-minute shiny ponies that show up on the game breaks, but they'd be hard pressed to do better with the mid-major flavor of the day or an offensive coordinator of a trendy school.

There are a number of places that would be glad to have Miles if he were forced out. Miami and USC would be two viable landing spots if he opts to stay in coaching. He might opt to take a year off, go on ESPN's payroll for some commentary work and catch his breath, but he won't be unemployed...not that he's going to have to worry about where his next meal is coming from.

Checkups From the Neck Up

I recall liberal quips at Gerald Ford's expense, one of which was "He played too much football without his helmet on." Even four decades ago (pushing five, since the line was attributed to LBJ), folks had a handle on the idea that football could well mess with your brain, even if we didn't have the hard scientific data to back it up.

This report seems to point to that data-

Eighty-seven of 91 former NFL players who donated their brains to science after death tested positive for a brain disease that is believed to be linked with repeated head trauma and concussions, researchers said.

The former players were found to have had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, known as CTE, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University.

The one issue that I see in this one is a self-selection effect. Guys who were suffering from "having their bell rung" a few times too often, having various symptoms of CTE, are most likely to want to have their head examined after they died. Guys who didn't have those symptoms are less likely to go that route.

That's not to say that the CTE problem isn't real. It is very real, so much so that it's a good question whether we want to encourage that by spending large chunks of our weekend watching it.

However, the number implies that 95% of NFL vets have CTE. Healthy players, or ones who died of other causes (Reggie White dying of sleep apnea complications comes to mind) aren't in the mix as much. Thus, it might take a few decades for players whose conditions don't scream CTE to have their brains gone over after they pass on.

Rookie Mistakes...or the Lack Thereof

Interesting factoid from yesterday's opening Sunday for the NFL- Mr. Winston was the first QB since Brett Favre to throw a TD pass on his first attempt...to the other team. Meanwhile the other Heisman winner making his debut, Marcus Mariota, threw for four 4TDs without a pick; Fran Tarkenton was the other rookie QB to pull off that trick in his maiden start. That's fitting, since Tarkenton was a running quarterback before his time (playing with an expansion Viking team, that was more out of survival than scheme), and Mariota is adept at running as well as passing.

It would be easy to rag on the guy who wound up becoming a poster boy for campus "rape culture" in favor of the straighter-arrow who out performed him in his debut. However, the night is still young in Winston's career. Tarkenton was a great QB, but he never bagged an NFL title, so there is room for Winston to become a title-winner like Favre in due time. However, Winston has a lot more glare to deal with than Favre as the first pick in the draft and playing for a home-state team.

Getting the Heck of of Gotham

We've seen a number of concussion-prone players retire early over the years, but the news of SF linebacker Chris Borland opting to retire after his rookie year is interesting. He hadn't have a major track record of concussions (one each in junior high and high school) but wanted to keep it that way.

I can relate to that very loosely. I banged my head on the front step to the house last week, where my sandal caught the step while bringing groceries in and I face-planted into the front of the house without free hands to break my descent. I'm not sure if I got a concussion per-se, but my vision was a smidge off in my right eye for a day or two.

We've seen a lot of news items in the last few years on the effects of long-term brain damage that can be caused by banging your head against other folks at high speed. We've also seen a trend to move kids away from football into less-contact-oriented sports (although, interestingly, one of Borland's two childhood concussions was in soccer, one of the common beneficiaries of the child football diaspora), including a presidential admission that he'd likely be leaning a son away from the gridiron if he had one.

That has prompted the though of whether football has much of a future if it's seen as too traumatic to play and smart folks opt to avoid the sport, both as participants and viewers.

I'm reminded of the candy-bar ad of a few years ago (19, as it turns out) where a quarterback "gets his bell rung" and almost passes an impromptu concussion test before declaring "I"m...Batman!" Well, Borland's Bruce Wayne opted to jump in the Batcar without his cape and mask, blowing out of Gotham West before turning into the Caped Crusader.

Carroll Through the 20/20 Looking Glass

I don't think the 2nd-and-goal interception play was a bad call. Yes, the conventional wisdom would have been to go Beast Mode and run the ball in. However, with only 0:20 seconds left and one time out, you can do two runs. A first failed run would take the clock down to about 15 seconds, then Seattle would have been hard-pressed to run the second play and then get a fourth down off before time expired.

Pete Carroll's strategy of trying a pass on second down is better clock-management. If the pass goes incomplete, the clock stops with about 15 seconds left. They then could cue Beast Mode, try a run on third down, call time out, and have a do-or-die fourth down try available.

Only a jumped route on the pass kept that from being seen to be prudent. With 20-20 hindsight, it was a bad call, but it made sense, just as move Bill Belichick made in 2009 to go for it on 4th down in his own territory made sense. Both went again macho conventional wisdom; Carroll was supposed to smash the thing in and Belichick was supposed to punt and let his defense keep Payton Manning from beating them in a two-minute drill.

Both gambits flopped, but were only bad with 20-20 hindsight.

Students Act Prudently, AD Objects

One of the highlights of an otherwise dismal sports weekend (Tigers getting swept, Lions looking to sign George Blanda¹ to improve the kicking game, Michigan losing at Rutgers) was Michigan State's win over Nebraska.

MSU's students often make jerks of themselves after a big game; riots are not uncommon after big games. However, they're getting ragged on for something a little more civilized; bailing out on the game a bit early.

Athletic director Mark Hollis took to Twitter on Sunday night to express his "embarrassment" with the pockets of empty seats that filled the student section during Saturday's prime-time, nationally televised game against the Cornhuskers.

Note that it's a prime-time game. 8:00 start with the game going to close to midnight, thanks in part to a broken leg that held up the game a bit. The weather wasn't all that good, it was 42 and rainy at 11:00PM Saturday at the Lansing airport, and the campus was likely not much different.

Add a 27-3 lead at the start of the 4th quarter to the mix, and it would not be imprudent to get to someplace warm and dry.

The students actually acted prudently. It made for bad TV when Nebraska rallied to get to 27-22 before getting intercepted on a last-minute final drive, but I'd rather have bad TV than extra cases of hypothermia.

¹ Blanda's been dead for four years, but he's still about as accurate as their current kicker. He'd give the Lions kickers some stiff competition.

Who's Your Donkey?

Carolina QB Cam Newton was trying to get a rise out of Lions DT Ndamukong Suh heading into their Sunday meeting by repeatedly calling him Donkey Kong. So far, Suh isn't taking Newton's bait. Suh does have a track record of getting more than his share of flags for late and/or rough hits on quarterbacks, but he's not quite the dunce that the classic video game antagonist was cast as-

Another, more credible story claims Miyamoto looked in a Japanese-English dictionary for something that would mean "stubborn gorilla",^[27] or that "Donkey" was meant to convey "silly" or "stubborn"; "Kong" was common Japanese slang for "gorilla".^[20]:238 A rival claim is that he worked with Nintendo's export manager to come up with the title, and that "Donkey" was meant to represent "stupid and goofy".^[32]:48–49 In the end, Miyamoto stated that he thought the name would convey the thought of a "stupid ape".^[34]

If Mr. Newton wants to find a real-world Donkey Kong, he might be better served to look across the line of scrimmage at practice at DE Greg Hardy, who makes Ray Rice look like a Promise Keepers' poster boy-

In her testimony in front of the judge, his former girlfriend, Nicole Holder, said the 6-4 Hardy flung her from a bed, threw her into a bathtub, then tossed her on a futon covered with rifles.

Holder said Hardy ripped a necklace he had given her off her neck, threw it into a toilet and slammed the lid on her arm when she tried to retrieve it. Hardy then dragged her by the hair from room to room, she said, before putting his hands around her throat.

Hardy's still playing, since the abuse he's been convicted of wasn't posted on TMZ and got the NFL covering their backsides in record time. I'm not so sure the NFL is covering things up in l'affair Rice, but they under-reacted at the initial case (2 games) and overreacted when the video went public (fired and indefinite suspension) in order to do a quick CYA.

Meanwhile Chris Davis is getting 25 games off for using Addearall; his permission slip from MLB to take the ADHD drug wasn't renewed and since it falls into an amphetamine bucket, he'll miss the rest of the season and the first round of the playoffs.

In what universe do those three cases make sense?

One Loss and Done? Not so Fast.

I wouldn't write off any conference just yet, although the Big 10 had a poor weekend, with Michigan, MSU and OSU all losing and Iowa and Nebraska having to engineer last-minute scores to avoid losing to lesser foes (Ball State and McNeese State respectively).

There are five power conferences. One of those could well have a 11-2 or 10-3 champ (subtract a win for the Big 12 who doesn't have a championship playoff game). Thus, a 12-1 Big 10 champ is likely very much in the mix for the inaugural four-team playoff.

Would a 11-2 or 10-2 SEC team trump, say, Michigan State if they run the table the rest of the way? Possibly, but it would depend upon where those two losses come from.

In the BCS era, a bad loss could take you out of title contention, since there would typically be more than one 12-1 team on the bubble. We're unlikely to see five power conference teams with 12-1 or better records, or a mid-major with an undefeated record and at least one Big 5 scalp to justify getting a semifinal slot.

The night is still young, and 1-1 teams are very much still in the championship mix.

 

No Mass, No Mass

Some conference expansions don't work well. The Mid-American Conference had Massachusetts as a football-only member, likely looking to play off of UMass' basketball prestige to get attention for the conference in the Northeast corridor inhabited by a lot of movers and shakers.

It didn't work. UMass has turned into a bottom-feeder in the conference, going 1-11 in both '12 and '13 as it moved up out of FCS status.

The MAC then made an offer UMass could refuse; join the MAC for all sports or get outa Dodge. While MAC football is a step up from the Patriot League for football, MAC basketball is a step down from their Atlantic 10 digs. Note the 6 A10 teams in March Madness, including Dayton making the Sweet 16, to Western Michigan's lone MAC bid.

Thus, UMass will be out of the MAC after the 2015 season. They'll have to figure out what to do with their anemic football program; reverting to I-AA/FCS seems to be a more viable option than trying to migrate over to the American Athletic for all sports, for I'm not sure the AAC would be interested in a football-only UMass.

Being an independent FBS team has few advantages and more expenses, not to mention the problems of scheduling 12 games and arranging bowl ties (if you could actually win six games someday) without a conference tie-in, so I don't see that as a viable option.

It also streamlines the MAC, giving it 12 teams, allowing for a symmetrical schedule and keeping the membership within roadtrip distance of a Great Lake.

Free Agent Free Thoughts

Here's a few thoughts on free agent week in the NFL.

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Back in the playoffs, New Englanders were up in arms over a hard-nosed hit Denver ex-Pat Wes Welker delivered to Aqub Talib; it was a split second away from being offensive pass interference and knocked Talib out of the game.

Guess where Talib just signed as a free agent? Denver. No hard feelings, one would assume, except from Ballcoach, who saw another one of his guys go for a Rocky Mountain high (but not that type, the wacky tobaccy is still off limits in the NFL) . However, they retooled that corner slot with Darrelle Revis; not a bad second choice.

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Jonathan Martin lands in San Francisco. As a Stanford grad rejoining his Cardinal coach Jim Harbaugh, that's a nice homecoming and a move to a Super Bowl contender; it also puts him in an area where schoolboy taunting about one's race and sexuality is far less tolerated. No, Martin doesn't like guys that way, but the more thoughtful guys get tagged as un-macho and get the array of anti-gay slurs sent their way by the locker-room Neanderthals.

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Blog-era homedog Kevin Holtsberry pointed out this piece on the opening day of free agency, where the total tab on the contracts signed went just over a billion dollars. The Poli-Sci wonk in me trotted out the Everett Dirksen line "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon, you're talking about real money."

Minor problem; Dirksen never said that. Just like Rick never said "Play it again, Sam" and Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty", the Dirksen line got installed into the language without him saying it or anything real close to it.

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He's Such a Welker

We're Used to It

The NFL has about 1700 or so players. One would figure a few are same-sex attracted. The 10% figure from Kinsey is from a biased sample, but even with a 1% figure, we're looking at one gay guy on every other team, given a 53 man roster.

So, I don't see Michael Sam's outing himself being a huge issue. He's poised to be the first outed NFL (assuming he catches on, which he should) player, but he'll get a better welcome than people think. A lot-of anti-gay locker room banter is often generic insults to the other guy's toughness rather than actual animus towards gays.

Liberals will be supportive and conservatives will be polite; hip-hop culture has a anti-guy streak to it, but even that might be generic trash talk, with rap aficionados being polite to actual gays while hearing them dissed on their Beats.

Likewise, Jason Collins' belated start as an outed NBA player is an interesting milestone. Brooklyn signed him to a 10-day contract, a fill in for a Nets team with few healthy bigs. After all the press his auto-outing saw last summer, the actual first game was an anti-climax, especially when it was a journeyman center who broke the barrier.

For better or worse, we're rather used to gays in the public square now. We may not think they're making good moral choices, but they're in the mix.

I recall a old chant of gay protestors of a couple decades ago-"We're here, we're queer, get used to it!" After a third of century of being thumped with that meme, American culture is just about used to it.

He's Such a Welker

There's been a lot of jawing over this hit by Denver WR Wes Welker on New England cornerback Aqib Talib. Welker levels Talib just as his teammate is trying to catch a pass; Talib got injured on the play to boot. Were it a half-second sooner, there would be grounds for either a pass interference call or at least an illegal contact call.

Once the ball touches the reciever's hand, defensive players become potential tacklers and are free to be blocked by the offense, which is what Welker did. Just like the body politic these days, Talib got it good and hard, going to the madrassa of hard knocks. Welker didn't lead with the head, giving Talib the shoulder instead of the head, so there wasn't a flag for spearing to be had.

Patriot coach Bill Belichick ragged on it as the dirtiest hit he's seen. That's likely sour grapes towards a guy who was Tom Brady's favorite target until Denver gave Welker a better offer last off-season.

I'm not sure if he recalls another Patriot, Darryl Stingley, who got paralyzed by Jack "the Assassin" Tatum years ago; in Tatum's defense, it was a fairly clean shot and wasn't even flagged (although the defenseless player rule would have kicked in had that happened today), but it left Stingley in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Talib is hurt, but not so much so that he won't be ready for next season; the report on his status noted a lack of structural damage to his knee. He'll have to pass on the Pro Bowl, but he should be ready to go when the minicamps start later this year. The same can't be said of the late Mr. Stingley, who took his last step leaping for a pass over the middle and getting leveled by Tatum.

Headbangers Ballgame

Here's an interesting Rick Reilly piece musing on the morality of watching folks knock the crap out of each other on the football field, noting the former players who are now suffering from brain damage from knocking helmets for years.

I can remember (in a non CAT-scan way) old boxers being "punch-drunk" from being in the ring for too long, but we're finding that a lot of football players have brains of 80 year olds in their 30s and 40s; Brett Favre, Dan Marino target Mark Duper and Tony Dorsett were the latest folks to come forward with signs of CTE, although Favre's diagnosis is anecdotal at this point.

I've passed on boxing and MMA for the most part, largely on the premise that I don't care for the side of me that likes seeing one man (or increasingly these days,one woman) beat the stuffing out of another. Reilly poses the idea that football might be best put into that bucket as well-

This is the game I've spent 36 years glamorizing. These are the men I've spent five decades lionizing. And it turns out I was part of the problem. Howard Cosell stopped covering boxing when his conscience wouldn't allow it, and yet I go on. I'm addicted.

Food for thought, at least.

Sports Bullying: Not Incognito Any More.

One would hope that adults would grow out of bullying... sadly, that's not the case. I recall a senior accountant at a former workplace that shall not be named here; when challenged for some unkind pranks on junior staff, he'd use his position to threaten your job for that push-back.

If a other-wised buttoned-down accountant can act like the kid who extorted your lunch money in 5th grade (I put up with a lot of teasing in that era of life, but thankfully never had to cough up any cash; given that I was the tallest guy in the class, I was spared that type of threat), should it not be that suprising that the NFL, where aggression is part of the fabric of the sport, might have a few locker-room bullies?

Given that history, it is with a queasy interest that I've been reading on the unfolding drama in Miami, where alleged locker room bully Richie Incognito got suspended from the Dolphins as part of a story where he is said to have driven fellow offensive lineman Johnathan Martin off the team with incessant abuse, including pressuring/extorting a $15,000 contribution for a team-bonding Vegas road trip that Martin didn't even go on.

Yes, there is a certain amount of low-man-on-the-totem-pole crud that goes on for rookies, like picking up that tab when a group goes out to dinner or singing your school fight song for everyone at training camp or hauling the Hello Kitty bullpen supplies backpack. This seems to be a few notches beyond that low-man stuff that even a sensitive sort like me could live with were I fortunate enough to get to that spot.

The conservative macho response is to either tough it out or punch the bully in the chops. That latter doesn't work in adult life, where you would get arrested and likely fired for "giving the bully what he deserved" and holding it in will often get you to a point where you go postal and attack the verbal abuser; when we're talking 300-pound muscle-men here, any attack is going to do major damage to persons and property.

The third option is to narc on the teaser. In a macho setting, the powers that be will likely react to a protest by questioning your manhood and/or referring you back to option one. That's often the flowchart for schoolyard abuse as well, where the kid is instructed to keep a stiff upper lip until he blows up and brings a gun to equalize things with the bully, commits suicide or goes under psych treatment for his no-win situation.

Martin wound up doing the last in this case, walking away from the situation and getting help; the big guy had a sensitive soul (that does happen, I'm roughly his 6'5" 315 size and am a tender-heart) and likely had no good option than to back away before he blew up, since narcing on bullies would likely make few friends in the locker room.

Such issues were incognito in the past; now they're out in the open.

Options and Futures

My dad had a line from many moons ago (Fran Tarkenton would be who I first recall it applied to), "There are old quarterbacks and bold quarterbacks, but there are few old, bold quarterbacks."

This ESPN piece on RG3's return to play echoes that classic line; can these modern read-option quarterbacks take the pounding that being an extra running back entails for the long haul? Here's Chucky's take on it-

"If they can stay healthy, they can have dominant careers," ESPN "Monday Night Football" analyst Jon Gruden said. "Now, the style in which they play concerns me because I'm not accustomed to seeing quarterbacks take the kind of hits, and as many hits as these men take. The quarterbacks that just got paid a lot of money, if you just look at the contracts of Matt Ryan, Matthew Stafford, Aaron Rodgers, Joe Flacco, Tony Romo, they just got $100 million deals. Yes, they're talented but they're healthy.

"We already have seen Robert Griffin get injured, unfortunately, and I'm concerned with any quarterback that runs the ball and plays the position recklessly because, as far as I know, the quarterback is the only guy that can't play on Sunday if he has a sore passing shoulder.

"That's my only concern. I love watching them play. I love the style of offense that they play. The combination of drop-back passing and option football is just downright nasty to a defense to defend. But can they sustain that style of play deep into their careers and eventually become $100 million quarterbacks, as well?"

The piece counters that by noting that the read-option leads to more one-on-one tackles, but fewer multi-player pocket hits that often result in the QB's doing an imitation of a Betty Spaghetti doll.

As a Lions fan, it's also interesting to see Stafford put in that high-end QB bracket discussion. They might well be in position to make some noise this year, especially if Reggie Bush can be utilized well out of the backfield; I'm waiting for the playoff match with San Francisco and having a RB comparison graphic of "Bush versus Gore."

Skin Game

I'm an alum of Central Michigan University, who's nickname is the Chippewas; they have a good relationship with the Ojibwe/Chippewa tribe whose reservation is just off campus. When the NCAA tried to ban Native-American nicknames, CMU got a waiver after the real Chips next door said they were cool with the nickname. If I recall correctly, the Seminole tribe similarly vouched for Florida State's nickname.

The Washington Redskins are in the news not for RG3's rehab but for another round of protest by Native American activists. I'm not sure if name has quite the pejoritive nature that they attribute to it, equating it to "the N-word." Considering that a fairly culturally sensitive guy who refrains from such put-downs is comfortable using it either means I have a blind spot or, to borrow from Inigo Montoya, that the word doesn't mean what the protesters think it means to modern Americans.

I literally can't recall the last time I heard "redskin" out of the context of the NFL team. Word associate that and I get "the Hawgs" and "Counter-Trey" with "RG3" coming hard on the outside.

Here's Commissioner Goodell's take-

"The Washington Redskins name has thus from its origin represented a positive meaning distinct from any disparagement that could be viewed in some other context," Goodell writes in the letter. "For the team's millions of fans and customers, who represent one of America's most ethnically and geographically diverse fan bases, the name is a unifying force that stands for strength, courage, pride and respect."

Some folks might feel dissed by the nickname, but it's not intended that way. Pacifists might be insulted by the Patriots and an atheist might object to the Saints and Padres, but those aren't going anywhere, either.

The Crazy World of... Rolando McClain?

Baltimore draftee Arthur Brown had a namesake who was an off-the-wall singer in the hippie era; his nom-de-guerre was The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

Looks like the younger AB moved up on the Raven's depth chart after free agent pickup Rolando McClain retired admidst coming in a close second to Titus Young in freestyle rap-sheet padding.

Passing on a Fin Tax

We might see one of the East Florida teams head west. Both Jacksonville and Miami are looking for newer digs, but state-level help got shot down. Stadium funding is an issue that crosses political lines, where deficit hawks on the right and liberals preferring something more virtious to spend money on than a sports stadium combine to fight jock-sniffers on both-sides of the aisle.

Neither the Jags or the Dolphins have a foot out the door, but LA has been laying the groundwork for getting a team back. It will be interesting to see if the Florida legislature has a change of heart not unlike Minnesota did a bit ago and shell out some taxpayer cash to help or say that they'd rather have the cash rather than another football teams; for X million a year, folks can root for the Bucs.

Speaking of dolphins, Minnesota's opinionated punter Chris Kluwe went Douglas Adams on us as he got released, citing a different sort of dolphin-

"So long, Minnesota, and thanks for all the fish!" Kluwe wrote. He added: "Thank you to all the fans, my teammates, and the Wilf family for the past 8.5 years. I wouldn't have traded it for anything."

In left-leaning Minnesota, Kluwe's pro-same-sex-marriage stand would be a feature rather than a bug, but his veteran contract and mediocre stats made him Turk-bait.

He's Not Christian, He's Bigger than That

Lawrence Okoye... I was talking about Christian Okoye a bit ago in a discussion on non-North-Americans who picked up "American football" in college like Lion first-rounder Ezekiel Ansah. The younger Okoye is a British discus champ who's 6'6" 304; the 49ers are taking a look at him as a defensive lineman; while he's played rugby as a kid, he's a newbie to our version of football.

Coach Jim Harbaugh is impresssed-

"An Adonis, a great physical specimen of a man. ... Our creator created a beautiful man," Harbaugh said of Okoye on Saturday, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Whoa, Jim. One outing per week will do.

This isn't the first time the Niners have taken a shot at a non-football-playing track star; Renaldo Nehemiah was a champion hurdler who play a servicable backup wide reciever for them in the 80.

 

Legends of the Fail

When a serious sports fan can't keep the names of their native college football division straight, it's not good. I think the batch with Michigan and MSU that makes a northwest arc save Wisconsin is the Legends, and the Illinios-to-PSU run is the Leaders.

Once Maryland and Rutgers get here, we go a simple east-west, with Indiana and the two Michigan schools joining OSU, PSU and the two newestbies in the East, and Purdue and all points west being the West. Indiana-Purdue get to contest the Old Oaken Bucket each year, but no other yearly crossovers.

One moan-inducer is a 9-game conference schedule starting in 2016; that leaves some poor boobie with a home-and-home out conference series with the prospect of only half their games at home in years that they're in a 4 home-5 away conference split. Life's tough all over, Bucky.

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A Generic Playoff

Will Traveler Travel to the Meadowlands?

Having an overnight pause between the first and second rounds lets teams burn up the phones during the day trying to get nice pieces still on the board. One interesting story is the Jets looking to move up from their #7 in the round spot to get a QB.

West Virginia's Geno Smith is the likely target for the Jets, but Philadelphia picks third in the round and might see Smith as a good backup for Michael Vick in a Chip Kelly offence that can use a mobile QB. If Smith is off the board by the time the Jets pick, Matt Barkley from USC and Syracuse's Ryan Nassib are the big QB names left.

Barkley would seem to make more sense.... except... he's essentially Mark Sanchez 2.0 as a cool-headed USC alum, and that would be an awkward situation, drafting a fellow alum as your heir apparant, especially when you're only in your mid 20s and not ready to go gently into the night.

If they draft Barkley, they'll need to bring the USC band and whatever version Traveler the mascot horse is up to (VII, as it turns out).