Tag: sports

Why do I doubt that Hollywood will be falling all over themselves to make a movie about this athlete’s heroic refusal to compromise his principles?

Jamaican sprinter Yohan Blake has said that he would rather miss the rescheduled Tokyo Olympics than receive the Covid-19 vaccine. Blake – a two-time Olympic gold medallist and former 100m world champion – made the comments in Jamaican newspaper The Gleaner.

Earlier this month, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that receiving a vaccine would not be compulsory for athletes and officials to attend this summer’s delayed Games, though they still encouraged competitors to be vaccinated if possible before arriving in Japan “to contribute to the safe environment of the Games.”

“Also out of respect for the Japanese people, who should be confident that everything is being done to protect not only the participants, but also the Japanese people themselves,” the IOC said.

Speaking over the weekend, Blake was quoted as saying: “My mind still stays strong, I don’t want any vaccine, I’d rather miss the Olympics than take the vaccine, I am not taking it.”

Now there is a man who understands risk-reward. There are some people whose personal situations justify the risks of the not-vaccine. Frankly, most of their genes could probably use modification. But an elite young athlete is definitely on the wrong side of the risk-reward ratio. 

It’s all about the talent, right? The talent and experience, right? The talent, the experience, and the intelligence, right? It can’t possibly be about ethnipotism, right?

Fans are going to watch NFL games, the NCAA Tournament, the NBA playoffs, etc., no matter who is calling the action. This is true for the NFL draft as well. So with ESPN needing a host for this year’s draft after parting ways with Trey Wingo, the network reportedly has turned to Mike Greenberg.

You’d think the network would want to use someone who has a connection to the NFL or college football, but that isn’t nearly as important as the opportunity for cross-promotion Greenberg provides…. ESPN broke up a successful morning radio show (Mike & Mike) so it could give Greenberg his own morning show (Get Up) and then ended up giving Greenberg his own radio show (Greeny) too.

So it’s not a shock ESPN would go out of its way to give the public even more Mike Greenberg. Now this is the part where I’m supposed to get snarky and say ESPN is giving us more Mike Greenberg even though no one has ever asked for more Mike Greenberg. 

Here is a prediction. The NFL is going to start falling harder and faster in terms of ratings and fan interest, just like the NBA. And no one in the media is going to be able to explain why, because explaining requires undersanding, understanding requires noticing, and noticing is very much discouraged these days.

I guarantee there are a few talented, intelligent individuals with NFL and college football connections who are noticing, though. I suspect the author may be, at the very least, suspicious, given the hilarious dagger at the end.

Personally, I’d prefer someone who is somewhat entertaining….

Kevin Garnett explains why you never, ever, talk trash to an individual who finds motivation through competition:

Every NBA fan knows former Timberwolves star Kevin Garnett was a legendary trash-talker. However, there was a time when that trash talk came back to burn him. Appearing on Wednesday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! Garnett revealed that when he was 19 years old, his teammate J.R. Rider got off to a hot start during a game against the Bulls and that got Garnett chirping at Michael Jordan. Garnett says he’s paid for it ever since.

“I was playing great, probably the best I ever played in my life at this point, and it’s against the Bulls and J.R. Rider is having an unbelievable game, too, and I’m feeling 19,” Garnett explained to Kimmel. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, keep going, you’re killing him. Woo!’ In the short form of it, I woke up a sleeping dog. … It just turned bad, Jimmy, it turned really bad. And it turned bad quick.”

Even Rider knew it wasn’t smart to push Jordan’s buttons.

“J.R. told me to calm down,” said Garnett. “He was like, ‘Yeah, we’re having a good game, but chill. He can hear you.’ I was like, ‘Who cares? Keep going!’”

Not only did Jordan then torch the Timberwolves, he continues to let Garnett know about it.

“Whenever I see Jordan he does the same thing every time,” said Garnett. “He palms my head and he says, ‘Remember the game I gave you 40 in three quarters?’ And then he has this sidekick … around him and he’s like, ‘Pull that up.’ And then a guy goes and pulls it up!

I’m like, ‘What is this?’ This is really Jordan Brand. Who walks around with content? Like, tee it up. It was an experience in which I quit talking trash to Michael.”

Michael Jordan is such a psychotic competitor. It’s truly inspiring. He takes the art of dead horse beating to previously unimagined heights.

They’re paying nearly 2x for content that is rapidly losing viewership. That math can’t hold up for long:

THE NEW NFL TV DEALS. 

You may have noticed that the glam Super Bowl matchup of Brady vs. Mahomes didn’t deliver the TV rating the NFL would have liked. The ratings were down 9 percent from last year. That may be because ratings are the average number of people watching throughout the game, and surely people switched off the 31-9 contest when it was a snoozer midway through the second half. But the NFL isn’t too concerned. Ratings for the NBA Finals were down more than 50 percent in 2020 from 2019, even with LeBron James playing; prime-time programming across all networks is down more than 18 percent from last season. And the NFL’s streaming numbers—5.7 million Americans streamed the game eight days ago—were up more than 60 percent from last year.

Why am I telling you all this? Because the NFL is close—“within a month,” one source told me at the Super Bowl—to inking new 10-year contracts with its network partners that could result in an aggregate increase of 70 to 100 percent in rights fees from the last contract.

This is the problem with smoking your own supply. Not a single mainstream source has even begun to accept that it is their convergence that is costing the sports leagues their audiences. The Super Bowl ratings weren’t down because it was a bad game; in fact, it was a very intriguing game with an all-time matchup of great quarterbacks. The ratings were down because so many NFL fans aren’t watching pro football anymore.

And next year, the ratings will be even worse. Which is all to the good.

If you think you’re going to survive the roving SJW terminators by keeping your head down and doing a good job, you’re absolutely wrong:

One day after announcing Chris Doyle as their new director of sports performance, the Jaguars have announced Doyle’s resignation.

“Chris Doyle came to us this evening to submit his resignation and we have accepted,” Jaguars coach Urban Meyer said in a statement. “Chris did not want to be a distraction to what we are building in Jacksonville. We are responsible for all aspects of our program and, in retrospect, should have given greater consideration to how his appointment may have affected all involved. We wish him the best as he moves forward in his career.”

Well, yes, the Jaguars should have considered the repercussions of Doyle’s hiring before he was hired.

It created an instant firestorm, with Meyer facing tough questions from the team’s beat reporters Thursday. It served as Meyer’s “welcome to the NFL” moment.

Doyle departed Iowa last summer with a $1.1 million separation agreement after he was accused of making racist comments and belittling players. He denied any “unethical behavior or bias” based on race. Meyer defended the hiring and said he was unconcerned about what Doyle’s presence could do to the team’s ability to add free agents.

News of Doyle’s resignation came only a few hours after Fritz Pollard Alliance executive director Rod Graves took issue with Doyle’s hiring.

Just being “accused of racist comments” isn’t just enough to cost you your job, now it will prevent you from finding another job somewhere else. It won’t be long before the only white people employed in large corporations are introverts who refuse to talk to anyone.

But don’t worry. I’m sure the media won’t abuse its newfound veto power. Much. Right?

The NBA is making it perfectly clear that neither its owners nor its players have any use for America:

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says the national anthem isn’t being played before games at American Airlines Center, and he has no plans to play it going forward. The team owner refused to comment further when reached by The Athletic.

According to the outlet, Cuban and the team didn’t make it known they were going to remove the anthem from the pregame routine, but “a number of team employees only noticed the removal of the anthem on their own.” Those employees also say there was no explanation as to why the anthem was removed.

Cuban, who usually isn’t shy about sharing his opinion on current events, was silent Tuesday night when The Athletic dropped its report. 

Everyone is finally beginning to see the difference between identification papers and national identity, even if they don’t fully understand the significance or the consequences yet.

1. Tom Brady cemented his status as the Greatest Of All Time. Not that it was actually in any doubt at this point, but he put Joe Montana further in the rear-view mirror with a near-flawless performance.  21-of-29 for 201 yards, 3 TD and 0 INT isn’t flashy, it’s just winning football.
2. Patrick Mahomes is legitimately amazing and he can throw long, accurate passes from positions that no one else ever has. But I doubt he’ll have a long career in the NFL if he has to play that way.
3. Shaq Barrett was the MVP, with honorable mention going to Devin White. No one, literally no one, expected Tampa to keep the Chiefs under twenty points, let alone ten. Barrett was most impactful player on the most important unit. The Buccaneers’ defense put pressure on Mahomes on 29 of 56 dropbacks, the most pressure in Super Bowl history.
4. Brady greatness goes well beyond his own performance. He inspires other players to play better and in a more disciplined way. None of the three guys who scored touchdowns last night, Gronkowski, Fournette, and Brown, are even on the team if he’s not there. 
5. Bruce Arians may not know how to fix broken toys, but he certainly knows how to make them work again, for at least a little while.
6. I suspect the pandemic helped Tampa win the Super Bowl this year, by keeping its problem players away from temptation and out of trouble.
7. The NFL can change all the rules it likes. Defense still wins championships.
8. Sportswriters can stop crying about Eric Bienemy not being offered a head coaching job now. Todd Bowles proved that if they want to cry about a black man not being offered a job this year, he’s the better candidate.
9. I’m pretty sure Mahomes actually threw three interceptions. The officials appeared to blow an early whistle on the one where the Chiefs’ WR had his hand between the ball and the ground.
10. KC fans can complain all they want, but the Chiefs deserved every single flag that was thrown with the exception of the meaningless post-TD flag on Mathieu. Tony Romo actually described a holding call as “soft” when the LT tackled an OLB and took him to the ground while strangling him with his arm completely locked around his throat. The KC defense simply refused to adjust their play to the obvious fact that the referees were calling a moderately tight game.

I never watch the halftime show so I could have missed it, but it was interesting to see that the league appeared to keep the SJW nonsense to a minimum, with the exception of a female sideline reporter warbling about how important it was that there was a female referee on the crew.

Warning: anyone who feels the need to go off-topic by talking about themselves or their disapproval of the sport, the league, or sports in general will be spammed and banned.

I remember this championship fight. I was deeply disappointed that Leon Spinks defeated The Greatest, Muhammed Ali. I still remember the 45 that the older neighbor kid down the street who years later drove me to school used to play.

Muhammed… Muhammed Ali

He floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.

What I found fascinating about this article from the Sports Illustrated vault is the way the two boxing champions absolutely refused to engage in all the posturing and nonsense invited by their entourages, and instead insisted on exhibiting respect for their opponent.

Ali accepted the decision without complaint. Around him rose anguished cries of robbery, of a fix, of being had. Ali, now the ex-champion, walked to his dressing room. He was crying, but his head was held high. He ignored the madness all about him.

He sat down and sipped a glass of carrot juice. Sarrea, his face emotionless, kneeled and began to remove Ali’s shoes. Someone shouted, “It was robbery.”

Ali’s head came up. “Shut up. Nobody got robbed. I lost the fight.”

The door burst open, and Michael Dokes, one of Ali’s sparring partners, flew into the room. He was furious. Indicating Ali’s associates, he said to Ali, “They fed you a lot of crap. They told you you were in shape and you weren’t. You listened to all the wrong people.”

“That’s right, not in shape,” someone said, grabbing the excuse from the air.

“Oh, man,” Ali said in disgust. “First I was robbed and now I’m not in shape. Why don’t you listen? I was beaten. I lost. He won. Can’t you understand that?”

Even after beating Ali, Spinks refused to accept the idea that Ali’s mantle had been passed on to him.

“I’ll fight Ali just like I’d fight any other guy who challenged me in the street. But I’ll never say anything against him. I’m not going against the man, I’m just trying to beat him. He was my idol, he still is my idol—and when the fight is over he still will be.”

In his dressing room Spinks quieted a small gathering. “Celebrate later,” he said, “but now, first things first. Before anyone starts jiving we must give our thanks to the Lord.” The new heavyweight champion of the world led the prayer: “Dear God, thank you for answering my prayers. Thank you for my not getting hurt, and for my man not getting hurt. Thank you for the miracle. All praise sweet Jesus.”

Late Friday night, two days after the fight, Leon Spinks stood at his hotel room window, staring out at the lights of Las Vegas.

“The thing I don’t like,” he said, “is people calling me the greatest. I am not the greatest. I may be the best young heavyweight, but he was the greatest. And he is still the greatest.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you should do it.

The great ones become great through creating competition even where none exists. A former Patriot observes something about Tom Brady that sounds exactly like the Sports Guy describing Michael Jordan:

I remember Cris Carter saying this at the rookie symposium: He was at his best and most successful when he created the problem for himself. And what that means is, he would walk into the room, and he would have a chip on his shoulder from what he created, to where he would just look at a guy and say, man, that guy doesn’t like my mom, or that guy is trying to take food off my plate. I’m gonna go show him. That’s the little details of being a professional in this league, and how competitive it is to where eventually it just gets boring—you have to figure out how to create your own edge. Tom’s done an amazing job of that time and time and time again.

Don’t relax. Don’t coast. Don’t stop beating the dead horse. Compete, create your own edge, and conquer. 

Convergence has struck at baseball history, as SJW sportswriters vote to keep Curt Schilling out of the Hall of Fame:

Schilling is responsible for one of the great and iconic moments in baseball history. He was one of the all-time great postseason pitchers and had more than 3,000 regular-season strikeouts in his career.

Yet tonight, we’re going to find out if he has been passed over for the ninth time for a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame. It’s going to be close. About 46 percent of the ballots have been made public and of those, Schilling is getting 75 percent of the vote. That number, 75 percent, is the minimum needed. But in the past, players on the borderline lose a percent or two when the ballots that weren’t made public are added in. 

In other words: Schilling probably won’t make it. And why is that? Because he likes Donald Trump. And because his support of things like what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 turns off baseball writers.

(UPDATE: Schilling did not make it. He received 71.1 percent.)

Cancel culture? Yes, if Schilling is canceled. He should definitely be in the Hall of Fame. But the baseball writers who vote on this want to be thought police, too.

This is a big moment for the Hall of Fame, and maybe for the whole idea of cancel culture. The Hall ballot says: “Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.’’

Voters — longtime baseball writers — have been struggling over the “integrity, sportsmanship, character” part for years. That’s why Pete Rose isn’t in. He bet on the game, which directly affected the integrity of the sport. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, accused in the steroid scandal, will likely not be voted in tonight either. They cheated the game.

But Schilling? He’s being kept out because the writers don’t like how he votes, how he thinks and how he talks. I’m not just guessing either. In the days before the Hall vote the past few years, this year included, writers have explained why they didn’t vote for Schilling.

As small and petty as this may be, if you haven’t grasped that the society in which you grew up in is now over, this should be another wake-up moment for you. This is not our culture, it is Zero History culture. We cannot live with the converged and they certainly don’t want to live with us.