Tag: sports

Apparently seeing how the NBA ratings have cratered, Major League Baseball has decided that it needs to follow suit and go after that sweet, succulent Social Justice demographic:

Major League Baseball announced Friday that it is moving the 2021 All-Star Game and 2021 draft out of Atlanta in protest of a new Georgia law that has raised concerns about its potential to disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters.

In a statement, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said the league is “finalizing a new host city and details about these events will be announced shortly.”

A source told ESPN that the All-Star Game is still planned for Los Angeles in 2022 and won’t be moved up to fill the void this summer.

“Over the last week, we have engaged in thoughtful conversations with Clubs, former and current players, the Players Association, and The Players Alliance, among others, to listen to their views,” Manfred said as part of his statement. “I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB Draft.

I’d like to say that I’m going to boycott baseball to express my contempt for MLB’s convergence, but unfortunately, I haven’t seen a baseball game since 1991. 

The Olympics have embraced social justice too, but that’s practically redundant.

 It’s not just crazy for feminists to insist on equal pay for women’s sports, it’s literally ruinous: 

The NCAA Division I men’s basketball championship budget for the 2018-19 season was $28 million — almost twice as much as the women’s budget.

Information provided by the NCAA to ESPN on Friday shows the men’s tournament brought in a total net income of $864.6 million that season, while the women’s event lost $2.8 million — the largest loss of any NCAA championship.

The men’s tournament budget for the 2018-19 season was $28 million, while the women’s was $14.5 million.

The demand for equality is why literally hundreds of men’s college teams have been eliminated. It also demonstrates why catering to it is going to destroy any organization or institution that does, including the universities and militaries.

The point is not that women can’t produce work of superlative quality that sells very well. Castalia Library’s newest book, written by a woman about a little girl, looks as if it is going to be out of stock faster than we’d anticipated. But if we were to insist that half our books be written by female authors, more than a few of our subscribers would rightly stop subscribing due to our failure to respect their demand.

It’s informative, is it not, that the sports media will openly admit that they’d rather defend a black SJW who sexually assaults women than a white man with right-wing views:

The Deshaun Watson that we thought we knew probably does not exist. We all need to commit to that reality and act accordingly. This includes the media, which has largely (though not entirely) tiptoed around the allegations. I suspect it is in part because Watson has spoken up about social justice issues, and he has fought to get away from a dysfunctional franchise, two causes that have endeared him to many in sports media. I don’t think people are giving him a pass for the assault allegations, but if you think most people in the media will go after him as hard and fast as we would go after, say, Curt Schilling, if he faced these kinds of allegations, you are fooling yourself.

At least this one journalist is admitting the obvious. Give him credit for that, anyhow. The SSH angle of this case is particularly interesting, as it indicates that Watson will almost certainly be a failure as a team leader. Many will see Watson as a predator, but I see him more as a psychologically broken and pitiable creature, a rare Gamma in Alpha clothing.

Not that it excuses any criminal activity, only that it suggests his NFL failure was always all but inevitable even if the whole thing were to go away tomorrow. 

Before Texans QB Watson became severely damaged goods:

Tony Buzbee says he now represents 12 women who will have claims against Deshaun Watson. “We are now representing 12 women and we will file five more cases in due course,” Buzbee said Friday. “we have spoken to more than 10 additional women.”

Other information learned during Buzbee’s Friday press conference:

7 African Americans / 2 Hispanic / 3 Caucasian

3 married / 1 engaged / all others single mothers

One was referred to Deshaun by Texans

Quincy Avery (HOU QB coach) referred Deshaun to one of his clients

Agent/lawyer for Deshaun showed “dismissive behavior and incredible arrogance,” so had to go public with lawsuits

Buzbee said he doesn’t need the fame & the women don’t want it

Buzbee adds that the Houston Police Department is now looking into the allegations that are being made

An incident happened as recently as THIS month — AFTER they had been in contact with Watson’s camp

Took shots at “Arm Chair Quarterbacks” who wouldn’t say stuff to his face

Buzbee stopped counting after the 10th death threat

Buzbee says he lives near McNair family, but wouldn’t know them if he saw them

As promised, trial lawyer Tony Buzbee filed more sexual assault lawsuits in Harris County, Texas on behalf of Jane Does who claim Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson engaged in inappropriate behavior during massage therapy sessions. Lawsuits No. 4-7 were filed on Thursday and follow a similar pattern as the first three lawsuits brought against Watson, who has remained silent on the matter since releasing a statement on Tuesday claiming he’s done nothing wrong.

We’ll see. But in answer to everyone who says “well, why didn’t they go to the police?” the answer is simple. The police never do anything about credible accusations like these when sufficiently rich or famous people are involved unless they’ve been ordered to do so. So no one bothers going to them.

Notice that the police are suddenly getting involved now….

Another old medical standby is vaporized by the evidence:

As the official old guy, you might be interested that what we were always taught to ice injuries and use the RICE protocol turns out to be as accurate advice as a low-fat high-grain diet or clear soda and crackers for a cold.

Just recently discovered this myself through this article.

The inventor of the RICE protocol has even admitted he was wrong.  From the forward to Gary Reinl’s book, ICED!  The Illusionary Treatment Option

Almost 40 years ago, I coined the term RICE (Rest. Ice. Compression. Elevation.) as the treatment for acute sports injures (The Sportsmedicine Book, 1978, page 94).  Subsequent research shows that rest and ice can actually delay recovery.  Mild movement helps tissue to heal faster, and the application of cold suppresses the immune responses that start and hasten recovery.  Icing does help suppress pain, but athletes are usually far more interested in returning as quickly as possible to the playing field.  So, today, RICE is not the preferred treatment for acute athletic injury.

– Dr. Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

Another example of something that makes perfect sense when you stop and think about it, but I never did because literally everyone my whole life told me use RICE for injuries.  And of course I advised others the same way.

I never iced anything but a badly sprained ankle, but mostly because I simply didn’t like icing. And I figured out very quickly on that the best way to avoid post-exercise stiffness was a) a hot shower, b) movement, and c) stretching. While we had ice baths on the university track team, I never once took one. I mean, why would you ever get in an ice bath when they’ve got perfectly good jacuzzis next door? 

One of the hard things about veterans’ sports is that it’s only a matter of time before the old guy retires. It’s strange, because it’s not like anything changes all that much, but somehow, it’s never quite the same once a player stops showing up for practice. Sometimes it’s a job, sometimes it’s family circumstances, but usually it’s an injury of some sort that is the cause. Sometimes it’s serious and there is no choice. More often, it’s a nagging minor injury that the player simply can’t manage to shake, and which reminds him of his mortality.

Soccer is a young man’s game. Veteran status over here begins at 32. I was already quite old for a player when I joined my current team 10 years ago, but somehow I’ve managed to hold my own despite slowing down a little and being moved from striker to the wing. I even scored a few goals in the most recent season, including one game-winner. But I was never the oldest on the team, in fact, I’ve never been the oldest player on any team dating back to when I first started playing at the age of 7 for the North Suburban Soccer Association.

I am 11 months younger than my teammate S, a tough defender who deceptively looks about 10 years younger than his 53 years – he also looks exactly like the Bond actor Christopher Walz – although unfortunately, he is now my former teammate, having announced his retirement from the club to the team tonight. So, as of now, I am officially “the old guy”.

I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep playing. When I was 45, an opposing player of the same age and I agreed that we would try to play until 50. Five years later, we both had a good game against each other, and declared that we could easily make it to 55. But tonight, after S’s announcement, the end of the road suddenly feels as if it is looming just a little bit closer than before.

I’ve been very, very lucky. I’ve been fortunate to play at a higher level than I ever imagined, to play against better competition than I ever expected, and to have been a part of five championship teams since I moved to Europe. There are still few things I enjoy more than the intoxicating thrill of finding the open space, kicking the ball and seeing it flash past the keeper into the back of the net. I don’t want to stop. I have no intention of stopping. But I know that Father Time always wins in the end.

Nevertheless, I’ll play as long and as hard as I can, until it comes time for me to take off my jersey for the last time and pass the burden of being the old guy onto the next player in line.

 Are now hitting the NFL hard:

Even though the NFL managed to play all 256 regular-season games and all 13 postseason games, the league lost a large chunk of money due to the pandemic. According to Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal, the league saw its revenue fall from $16 billion in 2019 to $12 billion in 2020. The league had expected to generate $16.5 billion last year, before the pandemic changed everything.

That’s a 27 percent decline in revenue, in just one year. Sound familiar?

From Corporate Cancer:

It’s one thing to simply claim that something is bad, it is another to demonstrate exactly how bad it is. Once a corporation contracts Stage Five convergence, it can go downhill very fast.

How fast? On average, as a rough estimate, up to 20 percent in just one year. This decline can take place in terms of either revenue or units….

While the NFL continues to publicly dismiss its declining ratings as a temporary problem, the fact is that they caused the league to fall short of its predicted 2017 revenue of $14 billion and knocked the league considerably off the track of its revenue target of $25 billion by 2027. A four-percent reduction in annual revenue may not sound like much, but it represents a 10.7 percent decline in expected revenues which is not insignificant to any business, no matter how big it is. Indeed, there are even some who believe that this unnecessary, convergence-caused debacle may represent Peak NFL.

Keep in mind that the TV money is actually increasing while the viewership is declining. This is a fragile situation; it’s more likely that the future will see an NFL with annual revenues of $8 billion than $25 billion in real 2020 dollars. 

And it’s not the pandemic. The pandemic should have boosted TV ratings. The NFL’s real fear should be that it did….

The NBA All-Star game is down 76.1 percent from its peak viewership.

Like all sports everywhere, the NBA has been suffering in the television ratings game, dating back to last season and the restart in the Disney bubble. That included an all-time ratings low for the NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat.

Well, it appears things aren’t much better today, as it was revealed that Sunday’s All-Star Game also hit an all-time ratings low.

Per Anthony Crupi of Sportico, Turner Sports’ coverage of the NBA’s midseason event averaged just 5.94 million viewers and just a 2.4 rating in the all-important 18-49 demographic. That was a drop of nearly 24 percent from the year-over-year average.

And consider this — the record high for the All-Star Game, which came in 1993, averaged 22.9 million viewers and boasted a 14.3 rating.

Professional sports are suffering from a triple whammy. First, demographics. All the outreach efforts to Hispanics, Asians, and other not-Americans can’t disguise the fact that not-white people don’t care about sports invented by white people as much as white people do. Ockham’s Razor suggests that they never will, for the obvious reason that they never have, and relocation to the USA isn’t going to cause a sufficient percentage of them to do so.

Second, the convergence of the leagues. The changes in ownership from a class that cares first about the sport to a class that cares about financial performance and influence over the masses is significantly reducing the quality of the product while serially turning off segments of people who increasingly become ex-fans.

Third, the behavior of the players. This is, in many ways, an extension of the convergence, because the behavior would not have been permitted by the old school owners. But it is nevertheless distinct, as the players are not so much biting as relentlessly gnawing at the hands of the people whose interest keeps them fed.

I am a lifelong NFL fan who was active in two fantasy leagues for more than 15 years. I subscribed to NFL Gamepass from the time it was initially offered. Two years ago, I stopped subscribing. Last year, I only watched part of the Super Bowl. Most damningly, I know a die-hard Packers fan and shareholder who didn’t watch one single moment of the NFL, not even when the Pack played in the NFC championship game at Lambeau.

Pro sports are not going to bounce back from their convergence. In fact, the pandemic is disguising the full extent of the catastrophic declines.

 After destroying both the ebook and audiobook markets, Amazon has set it sights on further reducing NFL viewership:

After steamrolling the bookstore industry, monopolizing online retail, taking a stab at dominating the pharmacy business and not that far from muscling out the competition and becoming the dominant player in cloud, Amazon is set to dominate yet another market: NFL viewership.

The WSJ reports that the National Football League is on the verge of signing new rights deals with media partners that could see Amazon.com carry many games exclusively and TV networks pay as much as double their current rate, plunging NFL viewership notwithstanding.

According to the new agreements, which could be in place as early as next week, TV deals for the league’s Sunday and Monday franchises with Fox, CBS, NBC and ESPN are likely to run for as long as 11 years, they said. ESPN’s deal would go into effect after the 2021-22 season while the Fox, CBS and NBC agreements would kick in after the 2022-23 season.

But it is the NFL’s deal with Amazon that is of most interest: it would result in a significant number of Thursday night games being available exclusively on its Prime Video platform and “represent the league’s deepest foray into streaming”, WSJ sources said. And in order to lock even more Prime Video viewers, those games wouldn’t be available on traditional television outside of the local markets of the two teams playing.

While it hasn’t been confirmed yet that the replacement of the Washington Redskins’ cheerleading squad with a nameless gay men’s Chippendale dance troupe was dictated by Amazon, it appears likely that the Minnesota Vikings and the Kansas City Chiefs will be terminated from the league for racism, while the New England Patriots have already received an email from Amazon informing them that their games will not be televised due to their extremist identitarianism.

It is, of course, merely another permutation of the Sino-Jewish War:

No American pro sports league has profited more from its business relationship with China than the NBA, and the NBA has been known to take some serious social justice and political stands in the United States.

So it will be interesting to see if the league will take a stand against its biggest business partner, now that a Chinese court has ruled in favor of a widely circulated Chinese textbook that describes homosexuality as “a psychological disorder.”

Remember, the NBA is the same organization that once pulled its All-Star Game out of Charlotte after a North Carolina law banned transgender people from using bathrooms in accordance with their gender identities.

Now, will the league speak out about the Chinese court ruling that states referring to homosexuality as a mental disorder is a-OK? Will it pull preseason games out of China, stop accepting money from Chinese merchandise sales, vehemently speak out about the communist nation’s decision to promote materials that are clearly anti-LGBT?

The point is not the hypocrisy. The point is that the Chinese response demonstrates it was never necessary to surrender to the neoclowns and SJWs. Unfortunately, the prosperity-weakened Christians of the West lacked the spine and the intelligence to defend their ideals, their nations, or their faith, and succumbed to lies about free speech, equality, posterity, and civic nationalism.

Which is why the 21st Century is much more likely to belong to the East than to the West.