Tag: sports

NFL Playoffs: Wildcard round

I felt rather sorry for the Cardinals. I have no doubt they would have won with even a journeyman starter, but it’s a little tough to generate offense with a 4th-stringer. As for the Steelers, it’s obviously time for Polamalu to retire. I don’t know why the media is always down on Flacco; he may not be Manning, Brady, or Rodgers, but you can obviously win a Super Bowl with him.

The Bengals are similarly overmatched. They’re playing hard, but I can’t see them coming back against the Colts. The only game I’m even all that interested in is Detroit-Dallas. I can’t help but notice that no one is clamoring for an expanded playoffs considering how bad the first-round matchups have been this year.

As for the Super Bowl, New England beating Seattle as the last hurrah of Brady and Belichick is my prediction.

I miss the bowls

When I was a kid, New Years Day meant hearing my mother, who grew up in Pasadena, watching the Rose Parade. I’d watch the four bowl games, the Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the Rose Bowl, and finally, the Orange Bowl.

And sure, it wasn’t always possible to know who the “national champion” was, but nobody really cared all that much, what was important was that the Big Ten won the Rose Bowl, that Oklahoma didn’t win the Orange Bowl, and that the games featuring the sort of matchups you hadn’t seen before were either a) good games or b) ridiculous blowouts. I don’t even know why I hated Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Michigan, and Notre Dame, or why I liked Baylor, Texas, Ohio State, Pitt, Florida State, and USC. But I had a favorite in every major conference

For me, things started to fall apart with the Bowl Coalition in 1992. The Big 10 and Pac-10 wisely held out for three years, but everything went south, literally, with the Bowl Alliance and the creation of a national championship played at the Fiesta Bowl on January 2nd.

Now, I no longer even watch college football on New Years Day. I don’t know who is playing in the bowls, and I don’t care. Are people any happier or more interested in college football now that the “national championship” is the de facto SEC championship? It appears I’m not the only one who is less interested in the unambiguous national championship system.

  • “The average attendance for bowl games has declined each of the past six
    seasons, down to 49,116 last season, the lowest mark since 1978-79, when
    there were 15 bowls, according to the NCAA bowl record book.”
  • “The Michigan State/Stanford Rose Bowl earned the top audience of the BCS
    slate, with a 10.2 U.S. rating and 18.6 million viewers on ESPN New
    Year’s Day — up 9% in ratings and viewership from Stanford/Wisconsin
    last year (9.4, 17.0M), and flat and up 6%, respectively, from
    TCU/Wisconsin in 2011 (10.2, 17.6M). Despite the increase, the game tied
    the second-lowest rating ever for the Rose Bowl.
  • The UCF/Baylor Fiesta Bowl drew a 6.6 U.S. rating and 11.2 million
    viewers Tuesday night, down 11% in ratings and 9% in viewership from
    Oregon/Kansas State last year (7.4, 12.3M), and down 21% and 18%,
    respectively, from Oklahoma State/Stanford in 2011 (8.4, 13.6M). The
    game earned the second-lowest rating and viewership for the Fiesta Bowl
    in the BCS era, ahead of only Oklahoma/Connecticut in 2010 (6.2, 10.8M). Overall, the Orange and Fiesta Bowls rank among the ten lowest rated BCS bowls of all time. 
  • In 2014, the BCS Championship game drew in 25.5 million viewers, and that was just the ninth-watched BCS title in history.

Here is what appears to be the root of the problem: “They (ESPN) need live content, even mediocre live content,” Maestas
told USA TODAY Sports. “Even 400,000 viewers in a sad bowl with 25,000
people in the stands is getting better (viewership) than 100 channels
out there.”

But what’s good for ESPN isn’t necessarily good for the game of college football. Quite the opposite, it appears. At least the NFL, for all its lunatic lurching about in its attempt to grow its female audience, is in control of its own destiny. This may explain why I won’t be watching a single bowl game today, but will not miss a single playoff game this weekend.

A portrait in lunacy

Considering that NFL head coach is one of the most difficult positions to successful fill anywhere in the world, it’s simply mind-blowing that what passes for the 49ers brain trust decided to get rid of Jim Harbaugh:

As expected, the Jim Harbaugh era has ended in San Francisco. The team has announced that Harbaugh and the franchise have mutually agreed to part ways after four years together.

“Jim and I have come to the conclusion that it is in our mutual best interest to move in different directions,” CEO Jed York said.  “We thank Jim for bringing a tremendous competitive nature and a great passion for the game to the 49ers.  He and his staff restored a winning culture that has been the standard for our franchise throughout its history.  Their commitment and hard work resulted in a period of success that should be looked back on proudly by our organization and our fans.  We wish Jim and his family all the best.”

Per a league source, the mutual parting makes Harbaugh free and clear to take any other job, including another NFL job, with no compensation to the 49ers.  So despite multiple, persistent reports that Harbaugh would be traded, the two sides ultimately decided to walk away, with no strings attached and no further obligation. 

However, it is an eloquent lesson on the way in which the bureaucratic elements of an organization always prioritize submission over all else, including both talent and performance. Keep this in mind if you think you’re safe in your workplace simply because you do a better job than your co-workers.

If you don’t kowtow to whatever regime controls your organization, they will do their damndest to run you out, no matter what the cost to the organization. This may seem irrational, but actually, it is your assumptions that are incorrect. They don’t care what happens to the organization, at least, not as much as they do about controlling it in an unchallenged capacity.

Most of the 49ers fans I know are in despair over this; one is even considering changing his allegiance to the Oakland Raiders. And frankly, I can’t blame him, considering that the York ownership is shaping up to be even more disastrous in the long term than the Snyder ownership in Washington.

On a tangential note, I’m sorry to see the Marc Trestman era come to an end in Chicago, as he’s the friend of a friend. But unlike the San Francisco situation, it’s impossible to question that decision. Trestman’s failure with the Bears is proof that sometimes, intelligence and hard work simply isn’t sufficient for success.

“Shut up, boys,” they explained

The St. Louis police appear to have been underwhelmed by the Black Power-style Ferguson gesture made by five of the St. Louis Rams at yesterday’s game:

“The St. Louis Police Officers Association is profoundly disappointed with the members of the St. Louis Rams football team who chose to ignore the mountains of evidence released from the St. Louis County Grand Jury this week and engage in a display that police officers around the nation found tasteless, offensive and inflammatory.

“All week long, the Rams and the NFL were on the phone with the St. Louis Police Department asking for assurances that the players and the fans would be kept safe from the violent protesters who had rioted, looted, and burned buildings in Ferguson. Our officers have been working 12-hour shifts for over a week, they had days off including Thanksgiving cancelled so that they could defend this community from those on the streets that perpetuate this myth that Michael Brown was executed by a brother police officer and then, as the players and their fans sit safely in their dome under the watchful protection of hundreds of St. Louis’s finest, they take to the turf to call a now-exonerated officer a murderer, that is way out-of-bounds, to put it in football parlance.

“I know that there are those that will say that these players are simply exercising their First Amendment rights. Well, I’ve got news for people who think that way, cops have first amendment rights too, and we plan to exercise ours.  I’d remind the NFL and their players that it is not the violent thugs burning down buildings that buy their advertiser’s products.  It’s cops and the good people of St. Louis and other NFL towns that do.”

It was a remarkably stupid gesture. But young men are foolish, and spoiled young black male athletes are more foolish than most. It signifies nothing. What I find more interesting about their gesture was the public reaction to it. It tends to support the notion that blacks have lost the average white American’s inclination towards sympathy. The 60’s-instilled white guilt over slavery and white enthusiasm for the civil rights charade is rapidly dissipating in a considerably less white country where tens of millions of Hispanics, Asians, and Arabs simply don’t give a quantumn of a damn about blacks or their historical sob story.

“Oh, lawsy, mah great-great-great grandpappy wuz a slave!”

“Qué chingados, cabron. I just got here five minutes ago. What the fuck do I care about your pendejo grandpappy?” 

This mass indifference quite naturally causes many whites to wonder why they are expected to feel guilty about the continued inability of Africans to behave, or even to want to behave, like 18th century Englishmen. Not that there aren’t plenty of white SJWs who will salute the five players for their “courage” and “inclusivity” and spew all the customary buzzwords, but the anger and contempt most fans felt for the anti-police gesture was palpable on a number of sports-related sites. I also suspect that the half-hearted nature of the riots may have been in part due to blacks correctly sensing that there are an increasing number of whites who would welcome the race war that blacks have been threatening for fifty years.

It’s easy to be magnanimous and optimistic about the prospects for a permanent state of kumbaya when everything is going well economically and the majority population doesn’t feel threatened. It’s when the economy goes south and the majority is in the process of becoming a minority itself that race relations, class relations, and ideological relations tend to disintegrate.

Remember, majorities exist in almost every human society for a reason. And where they don’t exist naturally, they usually create themselves, often through less than entirely peaceful means. Fred points out the observable reality:

We need to realize, but will not, that blacks are a separate people, self-aware and cohesive. They have their own dialect, music, and modes of dress, which they value. They name their kids LaToya and Keeshawn instead of Robert and Carol because they want to maintain a distance from whites.

The races spring from utterly different cultures. Compulsory integration is thus a form of social imperialism in which whites try to force blacks to conform to European norms. Blacks have no historical connection at all to Greece, Rome, the Old Testament Hebrews, Christianity, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, to Newton, LaGrange, or Galois, to the philosophic tradition of Thales, Aquinas, Schopenhauer, or Hegel. Nor do Eurowhites have roots in Africa. No commonality exists.

Postracialism isn’t merely one of the many equalitarian unicorns, it is intrinsically opposed to black self-determination. They don’t want to be white. They have their own identity, their own pride, and their own culture. And there is nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that it has been forcibly intertwined with white American culture.

The pursuit of safety

Is often counterproductive, as was seen in the accidental death of the young EnglishAustralian cricketer, Phil Hughes:

Most of my career I batted on uncovered pitches without a helmet. This taught me how important it was to have a good technique and courage against fast bowling. Why? Because you required judgment of what to leave, when to duck and when to play the ball. But you had to be even more careful about attempting to hook because at the back of your mind you knew that if you made a mistake you could get seriously hurt.

I once asked Len Hutton, a great iconic player, whether he hooked Ray Lindwall or Keith Miller. He said he once tried it at the Oval and he got halfway through the shot then cut it out because out of the corner of his eye he could see the hospital. That tells you everything.

Before the advent of helmets in Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in the late 1970s, if a team had a genuine fast bowler, tail-enders did not hang around. You did not see tail-enders propping and copping. They played shots or got out because at the back of their mind they were terrified of being hurt.

Helmets have unfortunately now taken away a lot of that fear and have given every batsman a false sense of security. They feel safe and people will now attempt to either pull or hook almost every short ball that is bowled at them.

Even tail-enders come in and bat like millionaires, flailing away and having a go at short balls with poor technique and a lack of footwork. Helmets have made batsmen feel safe in the belief that they cannot be hurt and made batsmen more carefree and careless. As a consequence more players get hit on the helmet nowadays than ever got hit on the head, before we batted without this protection.

This is true in the broader historical culture as well as the world of sport. We attempt to protect our women and children, to ensconce them in a rubber-and-plastic safety bubble that will keep them from all harm, forgetting that in protecting them from the petty dangers, they tend to forget about the existence of the more serious ones.

It is when we feel invulnerable that we are most susceptible to being taught otherwise.

So much for the reinvention of the position

Steve Sailer observes that despite the NFL’s being openly desirous of the success of black quarterbacks, they’re simply not very successful in the league anymore despite the growing number of them coming out of the NCAA:

Back in 2003 Rush Limbaugh got fired from being a color commentator on Monday Night Football for pointing out that the media had been pushing hard for more black quarterbacks for decades. So Rush got fired because everybody knows that the only reasons don’t make up 75% of NFL starting quarterbacks is discrimination and the burdens of history.

So I like to check in on how black quarterbacks are doing. This QBR rating counts their running contributions, so it’s the best measure yet.

Here are black QBs (treating Colin Kaepernick as black) who ranked in the top 20 for each year as far back as QBR has been calculated. I counted the top 20 in a 32 team league since it’s pretty safe to assume that if you rank in the top 20 you deserve to start, whereas if you are, say, 29th, then there’s probably a benchwarmer another team that deserves your job.

2014: 2 (Russell Wilson 14, Colin Kaepernick 16)

2013: 3 (Colin Kaepernick 6, Russell Wilson 12, Cam Newton 13)

2012: 4 (Robert Griffin 5, Russell Wilson 6, Cam Newton 14, Josh Freeman 15)

2011: 2 (Michael Vick 7, Cam Newton 15)

2010: 3 (Michael Vick 5, Josh Freeman 6, David Garrard 13)

2009: 3 (Vince Young 7, Donovan McNabb 13, David Garrard 19)

2008: 3 (David Garrard 16, Jason Campbell 17, Donovan McNabb 18)

2007: 4 (David Garrard 3, Jason Campbell 15, Donovan McNabb 16, Tarvaris Jackson 19)

2006: 4 (Steve McNair 6, Donovan McNabb 7, Vince Young 11, Michael Vick 15)

It’s fairly obvious to me why blacks are increasingly unable to successfully play quarterback in the NFL. The new passing rules tend to benefit the mentally faster quarterbacks, nearly all of whom are white. Michael Vick’s much-ballyhooed “reinvention of the quarterback position” has failed for the very reason that detractors of running quarterbacks predicted: sooner or later a running quarterback is going to take a hit that slows him down.

Look at the difference between Robert Griffin and Andrew Luck. In 2012, you could seriously argue that Griffin was the better quarterback. One injury later, Griffin has lost his superhuman quickness, and having proved himself to be almost embarrassingly incompetent as a pocket passer, has just been benched for the second and possibly final time as a Redskin. He simply can’t see the field and process it quickly enough; the image shows a play in which he had no less than FIVE receivers open and somehow ended up throwing it away while also managing to take a shot from a defensive lineman.

It’s almost always the same. A running quarterback simply isn’t going to a) start many games in a row, or b) maintain his peak level of play very long. As a long-suffering Vikings fan, I very well know the difference between a scrambler who moves around to buy time – Tarkenton, Cunningham – and a runner who takes off in a panic as soon as his scripted first option fails to come open: Gannon, Culpepper, Ponder, although hopefully NOT Bridgewater.

NFL quarterback is arguably the single most difficult thing for a human being to do. It requires a bizarre blend of physical ability and mental agility that is incredibly rare, and today’s physically gifted runners are the modern version of yesterday’s rocket-armed blockheads. I find it very puzzling that NFL teams still haven’t learned that you simply can’t teach seeing the field and reacting to it. It’s interesting to see that Tarvaris Jackson cracked the top 20 in QBR at one point. He may have been the most perfectly coached quarterback I’ve ever seen play. He was a team player, he worked very hard, he always did his absolute best, he listened to his coaches as if their words were coming from on high, and his movements were so perfectly rehearsed that he looked like a well-oiled robot. I wasn’t at all surprised to see him go on to have a very successful career as a backup quarterback. But he just processed everything too slowly. Drop back, check one, check two… sack!

Anyhow, I won’t be surprised if in another year or two, we start seeing the football media start to complain that the new passing rules are racist. Because they observably place a premium on a particular skill that no current black quarterbacks – yes, zero, which you’ll know if you’ve seen Wilson or Kaepernick play this year – appear to possess.

FIRE GOODELL NOW

Actually, forget firing him. Roger Goodell should be stripped naked, whipped with tree branches, and then locked in an elevator with Ray Rice and Bill Simmons until he resigns:

Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings was notified today that he has
been suspended without pay for at least the remainder of the 2014 NFL
season, and will not be considered for reinstatement before April 15,
for violating the NFL Personal Conduct Policy in an incident of abusive
discipline that he inflicted on his four-year-old son last May. Peterson
pled no contest on November 4 in state court in Montgomery County,
Texas to reckless assault of the child.

What an utter fucking joke. I hope the NFLPA declares a strike. As if Goodell gives a quantum of a damn about anything but how he thinks the league looks to women who don’t watch football anyhow.

“The NFL Players Association released a statement shortly after the NFL
announced Peterson’s suspension, and in it the union said the league
lacks the credibility to appropriately handle player discipline. Smith
said the players have lost confidence in Goodell.”

So have the fans. The real fans of the game.

The 18-year delta

Ender was excited last night because, with his B team season at an end, the first team had extended an open invitation to the B team players to practice with them. It’s a chance for the coaches to see which young men are ready to play with the men, and who the eventual up-and-comers are. The first team practices at the same time my veteran’s team does, so we drove over to the clubhouse together despite a howling wind and a black sky that threatened some serious rain.

It’s getting near the end of our season too, three-quarters of my teammates are banged up, and I discovered when I got there that a) the veteran’s practice had been canceled, and b) the first team was missing half its players due to vacations and whatnot. But I know several of the first team players and coaches fairly well because we’re permitted to field two players below 32, but over 25, and some of them play with us when they have an evening free. So, I asked one of the guys I know if they needed an extra player – thinking that they were just going to scrimmage – and he suggested that I stick around and join the practice. So, I changed, put on my cleats, and joined them in the middle of the field.

There were about eight of Ender’s teammates there, huddled together against the cold rain that had begun to fall and vaguely intimidated by the first team players. They know who I am, of course, and were visibly startled by my presence there – let’s face it, no one is more contemptuous of a middle-aged dad than an elite teenage athlete – and were further taken aback when the player-coach leading the practice greeted me with an enthusiastic handshake-hug. What they didn’t know is that I’ve played several games up front with Stefan and we are molto sympatico on the field despite him being much better than I am. We’ve both given assists on each other’s goals, and like most stellar strikers, he prefers having a strike partner who looks to feed him the ball rather than shoot.

However, Stefan had a full practice in mind, not a scrimmage. It wasn’t brutal, but it was strenuous, enough so that he came over twice during the repeated agility drills to make sure I wasn’t about to keel over. His concern wasn’t entirely unjustified, as I’m beyond old by first team standards; the oldest player on the team is 28. I would have been insulted, especially given the fact that I was pretty much keeping up with the tall B team defender in front of me in the line, were it not for the fact that I was fairly certain two more run-throughs would have resulted in vomiting. Ender and the midfielders were having no problem, but some of the defenders looked to be mildly in shock at doing 2.5x more repetitions, and doing them at faster speed, than they’d ever done before. Fortunately, we moved on to the team keep-away drill next, which is fast-paced, but gives you a chance to catch your breath if need be. Which was, in fact, the case.

The bad thing about being a sprinter is that you quickly run out of steam. The good thing about being a sprinter is that you bounce back just as fast. So, by the time we were doing the final drill, which involved a 20-meter sprint to a cone, turning around to receive the ball and firing a one-touch shot on goal, most of the B team kids had slowed to a jog, but I was still running. I even managed to put a few past Ender, who was alternating with the first team keeper in net. Ender acquitted himself well, making some diving saves and drawing praise from the first-team guys, which pleased him immensely.

I was more than a little pleased myself when, back in the clubhouse, Stefan clapped me on the shoulder and said, “hey, why don’t you come to the next one too?” Which, I have decided, I am absolutely going to do. It’s not that I will ever play for the first team, but I suspect he may find me to be useful in goading the younger players. None of them will have any excuse for falling behind, given that I’m literally three decades older than most of them. The best compliment, however, came from Ender, when I asked him if he’d found it embarrassing to have his old man running around the field.

“Actually, Dad, I didn’t even notice except for when you were the one shooting at me.”

I’ll take it. It’s a rare pleasure to be able to play sports with one’s son on an equal footing, so I will enjoy it, however long it lasts.

Horizontality and the keeper’s friend

Last weekend, I had a great game and Ender’s was merely passable. This weekend, things were reversed as I had a frustrating game and he did very well. After last week’s two-goal performance, I had high expectations when I saw that the other team’s goalie was older and not very good. I knew they had a decent defense anchored by a fast Portuguese sweeper, but I also knew I could score on them since I had a goal and an assist in both previous games against them.

But various factors conspired to deny me. The first chance blown was when a rebound bounced wide rather than to me waiting for it in the center, the second when a beautiful pass from the other striker was ruined by a stealthy two-handed push in the back from the sweeper that knocked me off balance just as the ball arrived. The third was a phantom offsides call, the fourth when instead of simply passing the ball forward, our attacking midfielder decided to shoot the ball wide, and the fifth when I had a clear run on the left side of goal, but badly scuffed the shot under pressure from the sweeper. We’d dominated the run of play, but nevertheless the score was tied at 3-3 when our captain replaced me 15 minutes into the second half. As I feared, that promptly shut down our attack, as we no longer had anyone on the field to stretch it horizontally or vertically. We spent the last half hour under constant pressure and wound up losing 5-3.

I know it probably confuses the guys to repeatedly observe that taking off a lesser player for a better one reliably provides negative results, but it all comes down to geometry. It’s not just that I have more speed, but also that if I am the attacker further away from the ball, I move out wide when we attack, which usually draws two defenders after me. The outside defender has to stay with me, and since they know I can beat him, the inside defender also has to cheat 10-15 meters in that direction as well. Not only do we get whatever opportunities are created when the ball is passed my way, but more importantly, taking 1.5 defenders out of the equation creates the space our midfielders need to bring up the ball and attack.

For example, there is a very good reason that an important aspect of the Barcelona tika-taka approach often involved one wing standing literally on the left chalk and the other on the extreme right side of the field. When you’ve got Lionel Messi in the middle, the single most useful thing you can do if you are not Messi is to pull a defender wide with you and leave the man room to operate. Fortunately, one of our new attackers has good speed, so I think I can teach him to do what I’m doing and we can stop playing a half-court game when I’m not on the field.

Ender and his defense started their game in a very shaky manner. They very nearly gave up a goal in the first minute, and the opponents had a pair of attackers with enough speed to make the defenders visibly nervous. One nominal backpass from the right defender (who subsequently had a very good game) was more akin to a shot than a pass; Ender had to volley it clear as it bounced. However, I was coaching from behind the goal and pointed out to Ender that they were attacking pretty much the same way every time up their left, so he blunted its effect by aggressively coming out of goal to intercept passes into the box, or, on one occasion, stuffing an attacker one-on-one at the top of the box. He also made a fantastic diving save on a low ground shot towards the right post after a corner, then pushed another shot onto the near post when the left defender was beaten. He did a nice job of intercepting a corner kick by leaping up and slapping it away before an attacker could get a head on it, and then was fortuitously bailed out by the crossbar on a free kick that was too high for him.

After ten minutes of Ender and the defense withstanding moderately heavy pressure, the star player finally did his patented “run through four defenders and pass off to an open man” for the first goal against the run of play. That shook the other team, and a second goal on the first corner kick they gave up – which, to Ender’s amusement, I correctly called in advance – broke them entirely. It was 3-0 at halftime and Ender didn’t have much to do in the second half as his team put in five more goals. Then, as is usual in such situations, the defenders got greedy to score and lazy about getting back, thereby leading to two goals that he had no serious chance of stopping, both from inside the 6-meter box. They ruined his chance at a clean sheet, but his team put in one more goal to close out the game at 9-2. It looked like an easy win after the fact, but as I pointed out after the game, if they had scored one or two of those early chances, the game might well have gone the other way.

One amusing note. The one girl on the team, who has played with these boys for years, is hopelessly overmatched but hard-working and uncomplaining, scored two goals as a result of her perfect positioning at the far post. It’s funny to watch her play, because she knows exactly what to do whenever she gets the ball: immediately pass it to the star player. The moment the ball is heading her way, he accelerates towards her and she will find him and pass it to him even if he’s got three opponents around him. After she scored the first time, all the guys mobbed her and the star, who had cross the ball to her, nearly knocked her down by enthusiastically pounding her on the back. The truth is that the boys don’t mind girls playing with them at all so long as they play hard and play on the boys’ terms without any expectations of special treatment.

Two wins in two games as the starter, with three goals allowed per game, isn’t bad at this level. The regular goalie will be back in two weeks, but Ender appears to have secured his place as next year’s starter in the interim. I think he’ll be entirely content to return to his role as backup goalie and substitute defender for the rest of the season. The new coach clearly appreciates his multi-positional utility, and it’s nice to see that someone who knows what he is doing is finally in charge.

The agenda-driven sports media

It’s a bit amusing to see Mike Florio backtracking after repeatedly demanding that the Ravens provide evidence of their claims that the ESPN report was full of errors:

One of the more glaring problems with ESPN’s story regarding the Ravens’ mishandling of the Ray Rice investigation relates to the text messages sent by owner Steve Bisciotti to Rice after the team cut him. In the story, ESPN presents the text messages in italics.  While quotes weren’t used, the technique created the clear impression that the text messages were being quoted verbatim. The surrounding context reinforced the idea that exact quotes were being shared…. ESPN has acknowledged that the italicized text messages did not reflect actual quotes.

“We understand the confusion surrounding our use of italics and recognize we could have been more clear,” ESPN said Tuesday in a statement. “Most importantly, the information in our story about the contents of the texts was consistent with what the team released.”

While the contents were consistent, the clear and obvious error in the presentation invites fair questions regarding whether other aspects of the story are incorrect, especially in light of the strong (albeit belated) written response the Ravens provided to 15 different aspects of the report.

This specific flaw also carries with it some irony.  At a time when the Ravens fairly have been hammered for failing to ask for the notorious elevator video, ESPN didn’t ask the Ravens to confirm the precise contents of the text messages sent by Bisciotti. Instead, ESPN asked only if Bisciotti sent two text messages to Rice.

The story from ESPN doesn’t disclose that ESPN asked the Ravens only to confirm that Bisciotti sent two text messages and not to confirm the contents of the text messages.  But the words selected by the authors invite a perception that the Ravens were informed of the alleged language of the text messages: “Asked about the text messages Friday, the team did not deny Bisciotti had sent them: ‘His text messages to Ray reflect his belief that everyone is capable of redemption and that others, including players, can learn from Ray’s experience.’”

So, ESPN is making up quotes, misrepresented their communications with the Ravens, and claimed that Ray Rice was watching the Ravens-Bengals game from his home
with former teammate AQ Shipley even though Shipley was on the
field for the Colts at that time, but Florio still thinks that we should take their report seriously? After all, the Ravens response was, in Florio’s opinion, “belated”.

At this point, it’s difficult to rely upon the sports media to get the final score of the games right. Assuming they bother to report it in the first place, given all the socially vital crusades for which they have to find space.

That being said, good on Bill Simmons for being willing to step up and say exactly what he thinks about Roger Goodell. He may be on the opposite side of the fence, but at least he is genuinely calling them as he sees them:

“Goodell, if he didn’t know what was on that tape, he’s a liar. I’m just
saying it. He is lying. If you put him up on a lie detector test, that
guy would fail. For all these people to pretend they didn’t know is such
[expletive] [expletive]. It really is, it’s such [expletive]
[expletive]. For him to go into that press conference and pretend
otherwise — I was so insulted.”

I think Goodell was lying too. I don’t think the tape justified one additional day of suspension for Ray Rice, but I don’t think there is any doubt that the NFL Commissioner didn’t know what was on it.