Posted on

Preseason College Football Punditry Shames the Profession

Or does it? Let’s just say punditry is corrupted by bias and our minds come nowhere near the Divine. There’s a lot we don’t know and can’t comprehend.

The talk before the first snap among many Pac-12 punditry sites doesn’t match the reality after week 2 of the season. The proof is all over the place.

CJ Verdell of Oregon breaks free in Oregon’s 35-28 victory over The Ohio State.
Stanford players celebrate a touchdown in their 42-28 win against USC. on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

A common opinion before the first face-off was that the battle for the top was between Oregon and USC, with a favorable mention for Washington. Teams like UCLA and Stanford were relegated to middling status, or simply falling short.

Well, the Pac-12 acquitted itself well against non-conference foes, but also some of the conference’s powerhouses turned out to be busts. One huge caveat before we crown the early victors or condemn the losers is the obvious realization that games have to be played, and are not decided by fans at computer screens. In playing the game, some teams need a few games to gel. They mature the more they play. Sophisticated offenses and defenses take a while before 18- and 19-year-olds learn them at the intuitive level. Anyone heard of late-bloomers?

So, some teams blaze early and then fade, and some are a slow burn. Some are up and down and dangerously unpredictable.

Another word of caution stems from the fact that good teams who lose come back mad. Losing can be therapeutic. It works the other way too. Some teams after a big win come out flat the following week. If talent and coaching are present, managing the team psyche is the job of the head coach. That’s why they earn the big bucks. The best shrinks that I know are coaches.

Back to the record after week 2. Predictions are in a shambles. UCLA knocked off LSU. Oregon goes into the Shoe and punished The Ohio State. Washington gets derailed by Montana at home to start the season. They follow the humiliation with a thrashing by Michigan in Ann Arbor. Lowly Stanford, thought to have serious personnel issues like weakness at the quarterback position, put a licking on USC on USC’s home turf, the LA Coliseum.

The Stanford thumping of USC should not be surprising because Stanford, and Brian Shaw, always get up for the Trojans. Stanford’s unexpected performance presents caution about the other conference members. Many are blank slates. Who have they played? Oregon State, Washington State, and the Arizona schools come to mind. Colorado, Cal, and Utah are mediocre to start the season. They could easily fall into the dangerous category.

I suspect more upsets are in the offing as we wind through the season. Right now, the team to beat appears to be Oregon, not USC. USC has yet to prove its bonafides. When some people say “Follow the Science”, they really mean “Follow factual reasoning”. And in sport, talk is cheap. The game still has to be played, fact. Only then we will know. Sounds obvious, but it’s what we’re left with in this mortal world.

RogerG

Posted on

A Big Ray of Hope

Coach Monty Williams of the Phoenix Suns with guard Devin Booker during a game on May 23, 2021. (Mark J. Rebilas / USA TODAY Sports)

In the midst of the frenzied jihad against the mythical monster of white racism with its unrestrained attacks and accusatory belittlements, there are those who’ve maintained an even keel. One such person is Monty Williams, head coach of the Phoenix Suns. His decency is a beacon in these troubled times.

In this year’s NBA finals, the Suns lost to the Milwaukee Bucks but Williams strove over to the Bucks’ locker room minutes after the final buzzer and court celebrations to say, “I just wanted to come and congratulate you guys, as a man, as a coach. You guys deserved it, and I am thankful for the experience.”

To get an even fuller measure of the man, in 2016 he performed the eulogy for his wife who was killed in a car crash by a man driving the other car probably high on meth. Widowed with 5 children, in tear-choked words, he said,

“Everybody is praying for me and my family, and that is right, but let us not forget that there were two people in this situation, and that family needs prayer as well. And we have no ill will toward that family. In my house, we have a sign that says, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ We cannot serve the Lord if we don’t have a heart of forgiveness.

“That family didn’t wake up wanting to hurt my wife. Life is hard. Life is very hard. And that was tough. But we hold no ill will towards the Donaldson family. And we, as a group, united, should be praying for that family, because they grieve as well.”

What an inspiration. God bless him. We are in desperate need of more people like him.

RogerG

Posted on

The Battered Bastards of Baseball

Robert Manfred, MLB Commissioner, in April announced the relocation of the Allstar Game out of Atlanta. The reason? In his own words: “Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.”

Robert Manfred, JD, MLB Commissioner

Of course, he was lambasting Georgia’s new election law which was meant to correct some of the impromptu and ill-conceived, panic-inspired changes to voting last year. The law included the hated but popular – hated by radical activists – “voter id” for all voting, absentee and in-person. What led Manfred to hitch MLB’s wagon to the horse of radical politics? It was more than talks with radicalized groups associated with Al Sharpton, Stacey Abrams, and Big Sports’ mega-millionaires like Lebron James (worth $500 million+). The sport is bureaucratized and, as such, is as isolated as LeBron James in his sprawling estate in Akron or his $20.5 million mansion in Brentwood. When you’ve become separated from the fan base, it’s easy to mistake the barking of a few well-situated extremists for a popular groundswell.

LeBron James, one of the NBA’s activist mega-millionaires
LeBron James’s Brentwood mansion

Just last October, at the World Series trophy ceremony in Los Angeles, Manfred was stunned after being heartily booed by the remaining fans in the stadium. Earlier, he had truncated the season to 60 games in a COVID-panic. From his lawyer’s mind, he tried to upend a century of baseball tradition with “pace-of-play” rules. Honestly, some of the rules might be justified, but lawyers are famous for producing a host of unintended ill-consequences. And, quite frankly, the whole scene is another one of those big-moneyed Harvard lawyers in a pin-striped suit telling main street America what’s best for them.

Yes, Manfred was a labor lawyer for Morgan, Lewis, and Bockius, LLP, when he came to the attention of the MLB big wheels in New York City, home of MLB, Inc. The guy is only familiar with the corporate suite and has less familiarity with the locker room than the queen of England. She has more exposure to reality since her love of horses and horse racing regularly took her into the stables.

The detachment leads to dealings only with groups, groups that aren’t representative of the people buying the tickets, gear, or putting their eyes and ears to the broadcasts. Manfred is an organizational man, far removed from the lives of ordinary wage-earners.

Organizational men and women are, by definition, bureaucrats, functionaries in an administrative state. We can see this unique social eco-system gestating in MLB in the 1970’s. It was abundantly on display in the short history of the Portland Mavericks as portrayed in “The Battered Bastards of Baseball”, currently showing on Netflix.

Bing Russell with his players and batboy.

MLB is sport as entertainment, as is true of all professional sports. The fan goes to the park to root for the team in a drama whose uncertain outcome has to be played out on the field. Bing Russell, the founder of the Mavericks, understood better than the corporate heads what drives fans, all fans. He gave them people to root for, care for, and have an emotional investment in. He didn’t see his single-A franchise as another cog in the wheel of the corporate machine. He loved being around the players and fans. To people like Manfred, it’s the opposite: the hoi polloi are statistical abstractions that are buried in the corporate balance sheet.

Bing reminded me of the early swashbucklers of Silicon Valley, or the Howard Hugheses in the young years of aviation: take chances and fly by the seat of your pants. That world is alien to a person whose chief qualification arose in matriculation from Cornell to Harvard Law to a federal clerkship to a law partnership to legal retainerships with the corporate suits.

In the end, we get a homogenized product without any of the grit of the qualities that make for personal attachment. We also get the blunders of an insulated nomenklatura. And all of us should know what happened to the Soviet Union by 1991.

See “The Battered Bastards of Baseball” on Netflix. You’ll enjoy it, and get a glimpse into MLB’s current condition. Oh, by the way, Bing’s son is Kurt Russell, the actor, who obviously has important memories to contribute to the story.

Kurt Russell in “The Battered Bastards of Baseball”

RogerG

*Also on my Facebook page.

Posted on

My Curbed Enthusiasm

LeBron James kneels during the national anthem prior to the game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, August 2020. (photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

Larry David in “Curb Your Enthusiasm” once famously said, “A date is an experience you have with another person that makes you appreciate being alone.” The disillusionment may have had something to do with his on-air divorce (and real off-air one) as his art imitates his life.

Larry David in “Curb Your Enthusiasm”.

For me, my great love affair with athletics is going through a serious estrangement, and no imitation of life. The drama of athletic competition is increasingly sullied by political sermonizing. That’s just what I want to see: ill-informed millionaires and soon-to-be millionaires (billionaires?), and their managing corporate suits, who know little beyond the playing courts and fields, giving us their chic ruminations on today’s issues-of-the-moment. It’s disgusting when each big event is turned into an opportunity for agitprop. I’ve joined the legions who’ve abandoned Big Sports, Inc., for the pleasures of other diversions – – with the occasional sneak peek, to be honest.

Big Sports, Inc., is in trouble. The problem for them is more long-term than short-term. In the near term, though, their losing older viewers like myself (a baby boomer), whose habits and loyalties are hard-wired. Sports-viewing and sports-playing are in our blood; yet, radical left political demonstrations that were thought to be relegated to college-campus romper rooms were brought into our homes just as we settled into watching the championship run of the Golden State Warriors or SF 49ers or SF Giants. Our sports stars began spouting slogans of the Marxist BLM and besmirching our flag and anthem with open displays of their radicalism. Provocative effrontery will illicit provocative reactions. It’s like they are courting resentment toward their product when they ought to be selling it. Shameful acts started piling up each year after 2016.

San Francisco Giants players and coaches kneel during the national anthem in an exhibition game with the Oakland Athletics, July 20230.

Older fans were taking many punches to the gut of their enthusiasm. The 2016-2017 kneeling protests ignited a fan protest of the player protest. Rasmussen at the time found 32% of adult respondents “are less likely to watch an NFL game because of the growing number of Black Lives Matter protests by players on the field.” Some undoubtedly returned, but many didn’t. Another slice of the fan base gone.

Then George Floyd hit the air waves. The tendentious sermonizing became less ad hoc and more systematized with the full participation of corporate headquarters. It swept across the world of Big Sports, Inc. My beloved SF Giants behaved like college snowflakes down to the coaches at the start of last season. I cancelled my MLB streaming contract. The rest of the oligopoly were equally as giddy about sliming us and our views, taking their cues from the worst of the demagogues in our academic and political worlds. Remember Obama’s “bitter clingers” and Hillary’s “deplorables” and Biden and company’s “white racism, white racism, white racism everywhere”?

According to Forbes in December 2020, in the 2020 sports year, the NBA Finals saw viewership collapse by 49%; the Stanley Cup saw an astounding 71% fee fall; and the NFL’s week 14 ratings dipped another 7%. Surveys at the time pointed much of the finger of blame at player politicization of the athletic field. A Harris poll in the fall of 2020 found 32% of sports fans chose “The league has become too political” among the ten options for their disenchantment. Does LeBron James sense something damaging is afoot when he took to microphones and cameras to condemn the Houston Rockets’ owner for daring to come to defense of the beleaguered citizens of Hong Kong? James, one of the most outspoken of the NBA’s player mandarins, saw evaporating dollars in Red China’s expanding market as he and others of the politicized left in the league ironically worked assiduously to shrink the domestic one. What other plausible explanation can there be for running interference for one of history’s most brutal totalitarian regimes?

Players of the Los Angeles Lakers and the LA Clippers took a knee during the national anthem in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, July 2020.

Certainly, another political act – the authoritarian shutdowns in panic response to the virus – has taken its toll. People commanded to conduct life without much of a schedule, zooming at leisure, are more willing to be more impulsive in their viewing habits. Cutting the chord is rampant; Netflix memberships lift off. Combined with the younger generations unaccustomed to games without a hand-controller, Big Sports’ long-term prospects look grim. The leagues are challenged by broad and threatening currents, and their stars go on a jihad to smear a chunk of the fan base. Go figure.

The behavior has tarred March Madness, and this just at the time when the PAC-12 had its best showing in years. Four of the five entrants made it to the Sweet Sixteen. But the coaches’ incessant fiddling with their masks, the gym not much more populated with live human beings than an ancient Roman catacomb, and endless ads based on the juvenile theme of “diversity is our strength” would drive away anyone but the die-hards. Just anticipating that this stuff is coming is enough to dampen the desire to see more. So, I no longer whip myself for missing a game. Que sara sara.

Coming this weekend is the NCAA tournament’s Final Four. I am planning to watch it, but, then again, I won’t seek counseling if I miss it. Que sara sara.

Ole Miss basketball players kneel during national anthem, Feb. 2019.
Members of the Georgetown basketball team stand for the National Anthem wearing “I Can’t Breathe” t-shirts before an NCAA college basketball game against Kansas, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2014, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

A postscript: As I write, MLB is facing tremendous pressure from lefty CEO’s and our doddering lefty president to join them in punishing Georgia for voter ID, more secure absentee ballot drop-boxes, early voting even on weekends (something absent in Biden’s Delaware), broadening access to voting in a myriad of other ways, and a ban on shot-gunning ballots to all. And they have the moxie to call this Jim Crow? I didn’t know that a Bull Connor lurked in the heart of every legal voter who worries about their elections becoming a Woodstock bacchanalia. If MLB caves, I’ll put myself in the same place in regards to MLB, and its well-heeled collaborators, when dealing with a nasty relative: in a location far away from them.

RogerG

Posted on

Time to Rethink Antitrust Exemptions for Big Sports, Inc.

The NFL’s building at 345 Park Avenue, New York.
NCAA’s corporate headquarters, 700 W Washington St, Indianapolis, IN.

We are on the cusp of permitting them to impose a permanent disfigurement of organized athletics. The entrance of the highly contentious ideology of transgenderism is about to destroy girls’ sports. Big Sports, Inc., won’t allow dissent. If you’re a believer in transgenderism, the full monopoly power of the organization will indulge your beliefs. If not, and you and your daughter aren’t warm to the idea of “gender identity” being used to hand trophies to people who weren’t born female, tough luck.

Terry Miller of Bloomfield, Conn., wins the 200 meter dash with a time of 24.47 in the CIAC State Championship Track and Field Meet in New Britain, Conn., during the 2019 outdoor track and field season. (Mark Mirko / Hartford Courant)

MLB, NBA, NFL, MLS, NCAA – Big Sports, Inc – are clear partisans in the turbulent debates of our time. They ought not be. They tip the scales in support of one side in these contests. This isn’t about the ethical ending of Jim Crow or giving women an equal place at the table of organized athletics. No, Big Sports’ special status as sanctioned monopolies gives them power to impose their favored side. For the sake of our civil order, they should be stopped and their special status revoked till their charters are reformed to prevent the harmful meddling.

They take one side on issues that should be left to the people in their debates and elections. Contradictory standards may result but that just means that Congress must step in and do its duty, not to allow others to usurp that responsibility.

Gov. Kristi Noem, South Dakota.

Gov. Kristie Noem of South Dakota was caught in the vice. She was intimidated from signing a bill to protect girls in girls’ sports. She’s right to see this as a political fight. I agree, and until a broad revolt gains steam, Congress should revoke and revamp Big Sports, Inc.’s permissive charters.

These are matters for the people’s elected representatives to decide and not the province of corporate administrative offices functioning as partisan zealots. The people are quite capable of settling these matters without threats for holding the “wrong” views from those of corporate desk-jockeys.

RogerG

Posted on

Left Wing Indoctrination

The California Department of Education building in Sacramento.

In case you missed my post below, in the “comment” section, I posted this in light of the California State Board of Education’s recent approval of pure left wing indoctrination in the curriculum:

“Oh, and one more thing, and I thought that I’d never have to say this: Parents, get your kids out of the government-controlled schools, for the sanctity of their own mental state. Use part of Pelosi’s $2-trillion bailout – the kid and personal money in the monstrosity – and head to a good private school with classical curriculum and instruction. Go to acescholarships.org if you need further assistance.

The government schools are fully immersed in the Left’s revolution. As a public school teacher for 30 years, I’m loath to advise parents to get their kids out the public schools. There used to be individual schools and districts who avoided the worst of it. Not today. There’s nowhere to hide.

Get your kids out them. Now! Use the part of the Pelosi bailout money that comes to you and your kids and if necessary turn to Ace Scholarships, above, or other sources like them.

Good luck.

RogerG

Posted on

San Francisco and Another Vulgar Super Bowl

Adam Levine performs with Maroon 5 during the halftime show at Super Bowl LIII at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Feb. 3, 2019. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Lady Gaga in Super Bowl halftime show, 2017. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ANTHONY BEHAR / SIPA USA VIA AP IMAGES)

Is it just me or have you noticed that the Super Bowl has become more than a championship game and has evolved into an over-hyped vulgarity having more in common with a bacchanalia like the reality of today’s Mardi Gras?  In addition, one of this year’s entrants is the team from San Francisco, a place poisoned by its embrace of a counter-culture – one that is also the dominant mental software of the commanding heights of our national culture (Hollywood, academia, cosmopolitan America, etc.).  So, we’ll have brought together in Hard Rock Stadium the orgy and the team representative of the city who embodies the fiercest assault on our traditions.

I’ve given this much thought: How could I allow my social views to influence my sports loyalties?  I was a 49er fan since the onset of my memory.  Slowly, in my later years, I began to notice the disconnect between my team loyalties and the city that has come to represent much that is seriously wrong in our society.  Say “San Francisco” and you’ll bring to mind social and moral dysfunction, more so than any other place.  I can’t get past this realization.

Homeless encampment, San Francisco, Ca.

Vagina costumes in the Bay to Breakers road race, 2015.

It’s about the city that the team represents; it’s not about the team’s accomplishments or its players and organization.  In my view, given the season’s worth of work, they should be the odds-on favorite.  Congratulations to them for a job well done.  Still, the city has become such an affront to decency that it is impossible to carry on as a fan.

Bottom line: Go Chiefs!

RogerG

Posted on

The Tennessee Ravens

Derrick Henry breaks the line for a 60-yard run.

No, I didn’t get the title wrong.  From my observations of the Titans/Ravens showdown yesterday – granted, I’m no expert – it looked like the Titans stole the Ravens identity.  They were as physical as the Ray Lewis Ravens of yesteryear.  It showed in many ways.

Way #1: 0 for 3 in 4th down conversions (Was it 0-for-3 or 0-for-4?).  That stat was a proxy for the Titan “D” line consistently stuffing the run and refusing to be blown off the line.  Of course, it’s easier to do if your offense is constantly chewing 7-8 minutes of the clock at a time.  Plenty of time for the “D” folks to rest, and the Ravens’ defense to tire from all the Henry pounding.

Way #2: 2nd-and-4 beats 2nd-and-8 anytime.  Wow, Derrick Henry is a pure phenom.  Cutback blocking, timely cuts, and monster size and speed creates havoc.  The Titans forced the Ravens to the line of scrimmage leaving spot throws deep downfield.  In that way, a journeyman like the Titans’ Ryan Tannehill would seem like an all-pro.

The Titans’ Derrick Henry as he breaks the line for 60-yard scamper.

Way #3: Don’t rest your scatback quarterback in week 17.  Such quarterbacks get off-stride and lose their rhythm and spontaneity after 3 weeks of … not much.  In the game, Lamar Jackson was continually off-target.  His on-the-cuff decisions were poor and lacked instantaneous recognition.  These are essential attributes for an offense defined by all things Jackson.

Way #4: Was it me or did it seem like the Ravens were much more frequently on the ground with injury timeouts?  The Titans hit harder and more consistently throughout the game.  Mike Vrabel and staff had their guys ready.  Indeed, what was to come appeared the week before when they dismantled the Patriots.

Just some passing thoughts on the game.  What do you think?

RogerG

Posted on

Sports is Increasingly Soiling Itself with Partisan Politics

Alex Cora speaks to the press about the boycott before Monday’s game in Baltimore.

I just learned in “Axios AM” of the Red Sox partial boycott of the traditional White House visit to celebrate their World Series championship.  Let’s be clear: I have my concerns about Trump, but admittedly even more so with the radical lefty lurch of the Democratic Party.  Let’s be clear: I have my concerns about organized partisan political acts by athletes.  Alex Cora, the manager, and some of the players say that they won’t attend.  Well, now I have another team who has muddied itself with partisan politics to avoid.  When will this stop?

Of course, Axios couldn’t help but portray the spat in skin color terms … and so do the boycotting players.  The poison of reducing moral claims to melanin counts, cultural identities, and ritual assertions of victimhood has penetrated the locker room.  Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.

It’s disgusting.  I’m reminded of an audience’s shout to singer James Taylor when he got political: “Shut up and sing!”  A parallel?

RogerG

Posted on

Just Do It, Even if “It” Means Desecration of Our Country

 

Once again, many American citizens can’t avert being affronted doing something as simple as going to the store to buy a pair of running shoes. Nike has given a paycheck to a person whose claim to fame is using the national anthem as the opportunity to express his radical social views. A NFL fan had to put up with it during the 2017 season and now Nike, with Kaepernick unemployed, has hired him to peddle their wares. Nike has the freedom to hire him; Kaepernick has the freedom to push his babble; and I have the freedom not to subsidize his extremist views. I’ll refuse to participate by steering clear of the “swoosh”.

Oh how muddled is the thinking of some. George Takei of Star Trek fame tweeted the rubbish, “Protest is patriotic”, during Kaepernick’s 2017 kneeling crusade – a takeoff of the old mental kabuki, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”. The saying has no provable author, but the left from Howard Zinn to the 60’s neo-socialist SDS have tried to attribute it to Jefferson – wrongly – or exploit it to justify spitting on returning Vietnam vets.

If Nike thinks nobility lies in hawking Kaepernick, they are mistaken. No, dissent isn’t the highest form of patriotism. Follow the logic. If dissent is patriotic, treason is the highest form of dissent, and, therefore, treason must be the highest form of patriotism (Thanks Jonah Goldberg for the witticism). George, it’s called a syllogism. Now we’re in the land of Timothy Leary and psychedelics.

Soiling the flag and anthem while forcing others to bear the spectacle is an unhealthy way to run a league or shoe company. Nike can burnish indecency as decency and Americans can avoid the corruption by staying away. Shame on you, Nike.

RogerG