Tag: sports

The NFL is bewildered by the fact that the very people who are supposed to be benefiting from their proposed new SJW program are opposed to it:

Last Friday, news that the NFL would consider incentivizing minority hires for general manager and top coaching positions boomeranged around the league. It elicited an array of questions: How would this work? Would it make a difference? And for some black coaches, who have lived the very problem at the root of this proposal, they wondered why this was the first time they were hearing about an idea they viewed as unhelpful—or even insulting.

The thing is, black coaches in the NFL have historically underperformed the average, which is the exact opposite of what should have been the case if they were being irrationally discriminated against.

All that affirmative action accomplishes is to confirm for everyone the very non-problem it is supposed to disprove, namely, the intrinsic inferiority of the group supposedly being helped. Seeing even more black coaches go 3-36-1, like Hue Jackson did at the helm of the Cleveland Browns, isn’t going to convince NFL owners to saddle their teams with the disadvantage of an intellectually overmatched coaching staff, no matter how many draft picks are dangled in front of them as an incentive.

UPDATE: Common sense prevailed for the time being.

The NFL’s latest idea to incentivize hiring minority coaches and GMs does not appear to be going forward. Owners voted to table the resolution that would have incentivized hiring minorities, according to Jim Trotter of NFL Media.

Don Shula was not only the only NFL coach to go undefeated in a season, he was a man of great sporting integrity. Hall of Famer Larry Csonka tells a story about an ethical choice that faced the late Miami coach the season after their undefeated 1972 championship season:

“We went into Oakland on a Friday and we were gonna practice there on Saturday. But because of construction in the stadium, we had to use their training room. They had practiced earlier in the day, they cleared out, and we used their locker room. I picked [defensive lineman] Art Thoms’ locker, because I’d played with him in college at Syracuse. I was gonna leave him a note in his locker—dead fish or something, mess with him a little bit. So I’m sitting in his locker, going through it to find something to write on. I find the Oakland Raiders game plan. Now that can be construed a couple of different ways. Knowing what they’re going to do . . . it’s their fault for leaving it there. Is it the right thing to do? Unquestionably it’s not the right thing to do. Was it cheating? I don’t know. It’s a fine line. I went and handed that report, quite quietly, to [offensive line coach and Shula confidant] Monte Clark. He said, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before.’ I walked away.

“Here’s the bottom line: We lost the game. Even with the game report, we lost the game. After the game, I’m riding on the bus. Monte Clark sits down next to me on the bus. I said, ‘Monte, what the hell did you do with the game report?’ He said, ‘I took it to Shula and when he asked what it was, I told him. He said, ‘Tear it up. If we can’t beat ‘em straight up, we shouldn’t beat ‘em.’”

That, even more than the man’s undefeated season, is a legacy worth leaving behind.

The fact that some are handed every chance at success doesn’t mean they will find it. Just as the fact that some are ignored and given no chance to succeed doesn’t mean they won’t.

A seven-year-old direct message to a recruiting analyst from the 2019 Heisman Trophy Winner, 2020 NCAA National Champion, and first pick in the NFL draft, who was not only overlooked as a high school player, but had to transfer colleges in order to get the chance to start.

This is an open thread to discuss the draft.

The President expects the NFL season to begin as scheduled:

The President conducted a conference call with sports commissioners on Saturday, and as to one sport in particular he expressed an opinion.

Via ESPN.com, Donald Trump said that he believes the NFL’s regular season should begin on time in September. Trump also added that he hopes to have fans in stadiums and arenas by August and September.

The question you should be asking yourself in response to this is not “doesn’t the President understand epidemiology?”, but “what does the President know about the situation that you do not?”

Let’s face it, he’s already gone two-for-two in the face of the media narrative, first with regards to flights from China and second about the efficacity of Hydroxychloroquine against the coronavirus. I’d be willing to bet he’ll go three-for-three contra the establishment media narrative concerning sex-trafficking once that news finally breaks.

At this point, only a wilfully-ignorant fool bets against the God-Emperor.

A reader writes about the beneficial impact of the health crisis on the world of sports:

I have been watching the economic impact that this virus could potentially have on the sports landscape. I read this article where the University of Florida AD discusses the economic impact of missing football season. 85 percent of the athletic department’s budget comes from football. One season without football and we can bid adieu to women’s sports. I can already hear the shrieks.

Also, I found it very interesting that the NBA has had to increase their line of credit from $650M to $1.2B to cover operational costs. They already lost $200M before the season started with their Chinese debacle so this can’t be good for the most “woke” league in all of sports. The NBA is not nearly as popular as the media makes you think. ESPN breathlessly covers it because they spent $24B on a contract to air games until 2025. With the financial perils ESPN faces, I find it hard to see them making it through that contract. Now I’m sure that league will do everything they can do to keep an already bottomless money pit in the WNBA afloat, but for how long?

Personally I love college football and enjoy the NFL. But if going one year without it means we rid ourselves of a lot of nonsense I can gladly find other things to fill my Saturdays in the fall.

Is there anything she can’t do? 

I have to admit, despite all the warning signs, I’m still genuinely surprised. I thought he would retire a Patriot:

Tom Brady is leaving the New England Patriots. After 20 years with the organization, the quarterback posted a tweet on Tuesday, saying his farewell and his thanks to Bill Belichick, Robert Kraft and the entire Patriots organization.

In other NFL news, the Vikings resigned Kirk Cousins and traded Stefon Diggs for the #22 pick, a fifth-round pick, a sixth-round pick and a 2021 fourth-round pick from Buffalo. I don’t like to see Diggs go, but that’s an excellent haul that couldn’t be turned down, especially in this year’s receiver-rich draft.

I think he’s going to LA to play for the Chargers. It makes the most sense for his post-football career.

UPDATE: Apparently, I am wrong.

The Bucs have an agreement in principle with Brady for a deal worth roughly $30 million per season, Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports.

I hate the concept, of course, as well as the expansion of the playoffs, but no one asked me. In any event, the NFLPA approved the new CBA agreement with the NFL owners in a very close vote:

NFL players voted to approve the new proposed collective bargaining agreement, which signals 10 years of labor peace, increased revenue share for players, added benefits for former players, an expansion to a 17-game NFL regular season and more playoff teams.

The 10-day voting period closed at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday night. Owners voted to approve the new CBA on Feb. 20.

The NFL Players Association issued the following statement:

“NFL players have voted to approve ratification of a new collective bargaining agreement by a vote tally of 1,019 to 959. This comes after a long and democratic process in accordance with our constitution. An independent auditor received submitted ballots through a secure electronic platform, then verified, tallied and certified the results.”

It’s not all bad, and in fact, it helps the average player quite a bit. But it’s still sad to see the records of yesteryear rendered even more irrelevant as what was left of the league’s historical continuity is further destroyed.

It’s also interesting to see how incompetence permeates through every aspect of an organization. From Peter King’s weekly NFL column, to which I’m not going to bother to link because it is very long and mostly unrelated to the excerpted section:

Spike Lee has been a season ticket holder to Knicks games for about 30 years. He is America’s Sporting Masochist. He has evidently been entering Madison Square Garden through the media entrance for a while, and the Knicks wanted him to enter through the VIP entry gate instead. The Knicks picked last Monday night, when Lee was on a crowded elevator, to enforce the rule that he should be entering through the VIP entrance. According to Spike, he was asked to leave the building and re-enter through the proper gate. Lee said no. Which led to a fight, and Lee going on ESPN to lay waste to the Knicks, and the Knicks issuing a press release to rip Spike. As only it could, the New York Post hilariously labeled the brouhaha “Gategate.”

Now, I am definitely not a subscriber to “the customer is always right” theory. Some customers are morons. Some are a massive pain in the posterior, so much so that one is better off without them as customers. As our valued supporters of the Replatforming know, I tend to prefer the “just RTFM, please” approach. But this sort of thing is stupid because it is so pointless and unnecessary. It obviously isn’t an actual problem, it’s just some autistic gamma in the organization sperging out about the fact that a category is being misapplied.

The correct thing to do is fire the autistic gamma for failure to be human, not publicly attack your best customer because his broken perspective of the world was offended.

I’m with JJ Watts on the new NFL proposal to the NFLPA:

The new proposal includes expanding the NFL’s regular-season schedule to 17 games, which wouldn’t go into effect until 2021 at the earliest. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported earlier this week that the proposal would also boost the sport’s postseason from six teams per conference to seven.

The NFL has been remarkably stupid under Roger Goodell. But this takes the cake, especially in light of the appearance of a new potential competitor. Watering down the regular season AND the postseason defies belief.

All sports leagues make changes in the hopes of increasing revenue. But as NASCAR has demonstrated over the last decade, it’s very far from impossible for these changes to result in steeply declining revenues.