Tag: sports

Another manufactured controversy

Texans owner Bob McNair demonstrates why everyone – everyone – needs to read SJWAL and SJWADD:

Doesn’t matter if it was said in private or misconstrued, there are things NFL owners can’t touch. And most of them won’t need this memo—any parallel between their workforce and prisoners is one.

It’s been 10 days now since a small group of players met with 11 NFL owners in New York City and, as we reported back then, the general tenor coming out of the summit was that there was cautious optimism that progress had been made on what remained a very fragile and sensitive situation.

On Friday, that optimism seemed to go out the window, and we saw just how fragile and sensitive this situation is.

Early that morning ESPN posted a story by Don Van Natta and Seth Wickersham on the aforementioned meetings. It was a balanced, detailed and rich piece, reflecting the progress made, as well as the divide in attitude among various factions of owners. One anecdote, however, stood out, and created an immediate firestorm.

“We can’t have the inmates running the prison,” Texans owner Bob McNair said, according to the reporting of Van Natta and Wickersham (we’ve independently confirmed it), during a debate over the impact the player protests were having on NFL and team business. Later on Friday morning, McNair released a statement apologizing for using the expression.

In the statement, McNair said, “I never meant to offend anyone, and I was not referring to our players.” Sources said McNair displayed some anger over the league office’s handling of the matter in the meeting, in addition to making the comments he did about the players.

Needless to say, the media quickly fanned the situation into open flames and the precious snowflakes that presently pass for NFL players promptly melted down, as if on command:

The Texans will show up for their game in Seattle on Sunday, but if NFL contracts were guaranteed, Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman predicts Houston players would stay home.

“Oh, yeah, those guys would probably sit this game out,” Sherman said, via Gregg Bell of The News Tribune.

Texans owner Bob McNair apologized after his comment about not having “inmates running the prison” was published by ESPN The Magazine.

“I appreciate when people like that show who they really are,” Sherman said. “More people in the world have to be that kind and that open about how they really feel so you can identify them — and make sure you stay away from those kind of people, and keep those people out of power.

“But, you know, of course they have to sit back and apologize, because it’s politically correct to apologize. But eventually you have take people for their word and for who they are. For most players, even when once we apologize they still take what we said and judge us by it. So you should do the same with him.”

What part of “never apologize under pressure” is hard to understand. An apology is always – ALWAYS – taken as a confession. It does not, and will never, resolve the situation, it will only make it worse. That’s why SJWs and the media – but I repeat myself – always press hard for an apology from the start. It is the guilty verdict that permits them to move on from the prosecution to punishment.

It’s NOT the protests!

Protests the NFL, unconvincingly:

Several NFL stadiums are nearly empty post kick-off as the National Anthem controversy rolls into week 7.

  • Plenty of empty seats visible at the Hard Rock Stadium in Florida as the New York Jets play the Miami Dolphins.
  • The Cleveland Browns are playing at home against the Tennessee Titans. Plenty of empty seats to go around.
  • More empty seats in Chicago as the Bears play the Carolina Panthers.
  • Lucas Oil Stadium has “tons,” of empty seats during the Indiana Colts vs Jacksonville Jaguars.

It’s really rather remarkable how SJWs just keep doubling down and keep lying, literally unable to admit the obvious even when it is right in front of their eyes. Keep this in mind whenever you are dealing with an SJW yourself and thinking “he can’t POSSIBLY be lying about something that stupidly obvious, can he?”

Yes, yes, he really can.

And if you doubt that Roger Goodell is willing to crash the league over this, read about his role model and then think again.

TIME’s profile also details Goodell’s road to the commissioner’s office. His father, Charles Goodell, was a congressman from New York, appointed to the Senate after RFK was assassinated.  As a Republican who opposed the Vietnam war, Charles Goodell fell out of favor with the party, and lost his seat in the 1970 election. This principled stand guides all of Roger Goodell’s decisions, especially the ones that fans, players, or even owners don’t embrace. “He loved being a United States Senator,” Goodell says of his father. “My personal view is, he never got over that. And that’s sad to me on a lot of levels. But he did what was right. He knew the consequences. He knew it was going to end his career. You can’t buy a lesson like that.”

He knows the consequences. He knows it could end the league. But he doesn’t care, because he believes allowing the players to protest America is the right thing to do.

Convergence in a nutshell

The NFL is discovering that social justice convergence comes at a price:

“If we are disrespecting the flag, then we won’t play. Period.”

Those words from Jerry Jones on Oct. 8 were widely taken as a salvo delivered from an owner to all the players using the national anthem as a platform for protest.

But as I see it, that was no declaration of war on guys kneeling. I don’t think the Cowboys boss was even talking to players. My feeling: he was talking through the players, and hoping his message would land in living rooms from El Paso to Wichita Falls.

And to explain why, I’ll give you the three words that should serve as your guidepost in explaining almost everything NFL: Follow the money.

The Cowboys need those people in West Texas and on the Oklahoma border to watch. The NFL needs those people tune in too. And the proof came in the ratings not that you read about this week, but rather the ones that were privately presented to the owners over the league’s two-day meetings in lower Manhattan.

The focus Tuesday and Wednesday was on the players’ desire to have a stage to address social causes, and the associated protests during the anthem that resulted. But in the background loomed the reality that the discord of the past few weeks wasn’t good for anyone’s bottom line, and the ratings might just be the first proof.

“There’s no question this had an impact on the business,” said Giants owner John Mara. “But this is an important social issue. And sometimes you have to put the interests of the business behind the interest of issues that are more important than that.”

That sounds very noble. But there is ALWAYS an important social issue for which the interests of the business must be sacrificed. These owners would benefit greatly from someone in their inner circle reading SJWs Always Double Down, because they clearly do not realize that the SJWs will never be content no matter what concessions are made to them.

We win again!

Overheard:

VD: Did we win?
Vineyard shop employee #1: Win what?
VD: Did we buy the most bottles today?
VSE #1: What?
VD: Did we buy the most bottles of anyone who took the tour today?
VSE #1: Um… actually, yes.
VD & SB: (high-five)
E: So, what do we win?
VSE #1: What?
E: Don’t we get a prize?
VSE #2: Hold on. (goes and retrieves a bottle, puts it in a gift bag.) Here you go!
Everyone: Hurray! (poses for a picture with both employees.)

All right, so there may have been an amount of wine-tasting involved. A considerable amount, as it happens. Actually, the best part was the five-star lunch at the restaurant owned by the vineyard, where we were the only diners today. Jose, our waiter, put on a truly professional show, complete with a freaking easel and cardboard posters, as well as an unforgettable explanation of how all of the animals who went into the meal were lovingly raised on the premises before being slaughtered. It was more than a meal, it was an education.

Jose: And the core of this next dish is the little lamb from our farm here, whom I raised myself and permitted to sleep in my own bed every night, until this very morning, when I strangled him in the most loving and humane manner you can imagine. We should all be so fortunate as to perish in a manner as quick and painless as little Pepe. (sniffs, brushes away a tear) He is served in a sauce of butternuts and rancid red wine, with potatoes, leeks, and chunks of jamon.

SB: So how did you kill the cuttlefish in the last dish?

Jose: What?

E: Who cuddles fish?

To quote F, you know it’s going to be a great meal when a) there is literally no one else in the restaurant, and b) there are three wine glasses per setting on the table. As it turned out, they ended up bringing a fourth glass per person, thereby raising the level from epic to legendary. Four people, three bottles. And that was before the wine-tasting started.

Needless to say, they got straight 5s on the customer satisfaction ratings. Except for F’s, who simply scrawled BEST TOUR EVER across his form.

Say what you will about Spacebunny and me, but we always win the wine tour. And if you’re a Foundation-level Voxiversity backer, you can rest assured, your European experience is going to be epic. We’ve spent 20 years researching this sort of thing.

Because they haven’t lost enough fans

ProFootballTalk, which should change its name to FlagFootballTalk, has an exceptionally bad idea:

The hit that broke Aaron Rodgers‘ collarbone on Sunday wasn’t illegal. Maybe it should be.

Vikings outside linebacker Anthony Barr hit Rodgers just after Rodgers released a pass, and the two of them tumbled to the turf with Barr on top of Rodgers. That rather ordinary hit broke Rodgers’ collarbone and dramatically affected the entire NFL season, possibly knocking Rodgers out until 2018 and in the process ending realistic Super Bowl hopes for the Packers.

I think it may be time for a radical rule change, one that makes hits like Barr’s illegal. It may be time for the NFL to consider dramatically expand the roughing the passer rules, and treat quarterbacks like kickers and punters: Basically, you can’t hit them at all once they’ve thrown a pass.

I know, I know, you’re going to tell me I’m soft and weak and ruining the game of football, and that we might as well just play flag football if we’re going to do that. And I’m here to tell you I’ve heard it all before.

I heard the same thing when the NFL changed the roughing the passer rules to prohibit low hits on quarterbacks after Tom Brady suffered a season-ending knee injury in 2008: “How can defensive players possibly be expected to avoid those hits?” But defensive players adjusted, and it’s now unremarkable that those hits are penalized.

And I heard the same thing when the NFL implemented the horse-collar tackle rule: “How can any defensive player ever catch a runner from behind?” But defensive players adjusted, and now the horse-collar tackle rule has been adopted at every level of football and is completely noncontroversial.

I believe the same thing would happen if the NFL dramatically changed the roughing the passer rule. Yes, at first it would seem wrong to see defensive players penalized for putting a shoulder in a quarterback’s chest after he throws a pass. But defensive players would get used to it, coaches would get used to it, and fans would get used to it.

And it would make the game safer for the quarterbacks, the most important players on the field. Is it really a good thing for the NFL that Aaron Rodgers might miss the entire season? Are hits like Barr’s really so fundamental to football that we can’t outlaw them for the health of quarterbacks and the good of the sport? I don’t think so.

The NFL already protects quarterbacks far more than it did when I was growing up as a football fan in the 1980s. But the league can do more. Roughing the passer needs to be expanded.

If they’re going to further protect the quarterback, then they need to make it easier for the defensive players to sack them. Either go to two-hands-touch and he’s down or give the quarterback two flags and tearing off one of them means he’s down. As silly as those options sound, they are much better than pretending that it is still legal to tackle the quarterback, but banning most of the ways to actually tackle him.

But I have two better ideas that will fix nearly everything that is wrong with the NFL on the field.

  1. Weight limits determined by position. No more 280-pound steroid monsters running a 4.6 forty. Get too big, you won’t play.
  2. Require quarterbacks to call all the plays with no more interference from the coaches and sidelines.
Of course, neither of these rules changes will fix the problem of convergence of the league’s owners and office, but they would fix the main problem of the on-field product being increasingly boring.

Kaepernick sues NFL for collusion

Colin Kaepernick confirms league-wide suspicions that he’s more of a pain than he’s worth:

Colin Kaepernick has been waiting patiently for his next NFL opportunity. His patience has now expired. PFT has confirmed that Kaepernick has filed a grievance against the NFL under the Collective Bargaining Agreement. The grievance alleges that the NFL’s teams colluded in not signing him to a contract, presumably due to his decision to kneel during the national anthem in 2016.

Kaepernick has retained outside counsel to handle the claim. The NFL Players Association will remain in touch with Kaepernick as the grievance proceeds; however, Kaepernick’s private counsel will be spearheading the effort.

The filing of the grievance was first reported by Mike Freeman of BleacherReport.com.

Kaepernick became a free agent in March after opting out of the final year of his contract with the 49ers. (San Francisco G.M. John Lynch has said that the team would have cut Kaepernick if he hadn’t opted out.) The Seahawks brought Kaepernick in for a visit, but did not sign him. The Ravens were considering adding Kaepernick during training camp. Owner Steve Bisciotti publicly acknowledged that fans had expressed opposition to the possibility.

The last straw may have been the failure of the Titans to give Kaepernick a tryout after quarterback Marcus Mariota suffered an injured hamstring. The Titans instead brought in Brandon Weeden, Matt McGloin, Matt Barkley, and T.J. Yates, before signing Weeden.

The clever part is that if Kaepernick wins, the Collective Bargaining Agreement will be voided, so even players who don’t support Kaepernick will have an incentive to hope he wins. The not-so-clever part is that it appears highly unlikely that he will win. The fact that nobody wants him on their roster is not indicative of collusion, it is merely a sign that no team wants to anger its season-ticket holders.

Jerry knows business

ESPN provides an inside look at the fecklessness of both the NFL league office and the owners:

Going forward, however, some owners preferred a league-wide directive. Dan Snyder, the Washington Redskins’ owner and who declined to comment through a spokesman, argued that the protests needed to end because of the danger that the issue posed to the league’s bottom line. A “$40 million” NFL sponsor was considering pulling out, he told his fellow owners. Snyder kept repeating “$40 million” to add emphasis, amusing a clique of owners who did the math and realized that, after the players’ cut of the shared revenue, it amounted to considerably less than $1 million per club — hardly a game-changing sum for a league that last year had an average per-team profit of $101 million.

In the meeting, many owners wanted to speak, but the discussion soon was “hijacked,” in the words of one owner, by Jones, a $1 million contributor to Trump’s inaugural committee fund and who declined comment through a spokesman. The blunt Hall of Famer mentioned that he had spoken by phone, more than once over the past 24 hours, with Trump. Jones said the president, who only a few years ago tried to buy the Buffalo Bills, had no intention of backing down from his criticism of the NFL and its players. Jones — who a day earlier for Monday Night Football in Arizona had orchestrated a team-wide kneeling before the anthem ahead of rising to stand when it started to play — repeated his refrain that the protests weren’t good for the NFL in the long run. Most agreed, but some felt that even if the league did lose a small percentage of fans due to the protests, it also could gain a new audience. There was a general, if fanciful, consensus that even a short-term financial hit could benefit the league in the long term, especially if the league and the union could join in solidarity behind a single plan. That’s how the league’s marketing department was planning to proceed, even if some of the rough ideas fell flat. One idea had all players wearing a patch on their jerseys that would read, “Team America.” An owner briefed on the proposal simply shook his head: “We need to do better than that.”

By the time Jones concluded his remarks — and by the time the meeting ended in the early evening — nobody had pitched a concrete plan about how to move forward.

Apparently Jerry has had enough of everyone pussyfooting around the players.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Sunday any player who disrespects the flag will not play.

Jones’ comments, the strongest made on the anthem controversy, came after he was asked about Vice President Mike Pence leaving the game in Indianapolis early after several San Francisco 49ers players took a knee during the national anthem.

“I know this, we cannot … in the NFL in any way give the implication that we tolerate disrespecting the flag,” he said following the Cowboys’ 35-31 loss to the Green Bay Packers. “We know that there is a serious debate in this country about those issues, but there is no question in my mind that the National Football League and the Dallas Cowboys are going to stand up for the flag. So we’re clear.”

Translation: I told you Trump wouldn’t back down and the fans obviously hate it. So knock it off, because it’s bad for bidness.

NFL Week 5

Open thread for those still following. TNF down 12 percent, biggest decline to date the late double-header on CBS, which featured the Raiders vs Denver and was down 31 percent from last year.

Over just one month of player, coach, and owner protests of the flag and National Anthem, the National Football League has gone from America’s sport to the least liked of top professional and college sports, according to a new poll. From the end of August to the end of September, the favorable ratings for the NFL have dropped from 57 percent to 44 percent, and it has the highest unfavorable rating – 40 percent – of any big sport.

It does not appear to be going away. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve just been using the additional time to work on Castalia House books.