Weekly Sporties

-The Major League Baseball trading deadline was on Tuesday. (Well, not really. Baseball allows all sorts of trades after the deadline, meaning it's not actually much of a deadline. Baseball is weird.) Anyway, there was a strange story which came out of Chicago a couple days later. The Cubs were looking to unload starting pitcher Ryan Dempster to a contender to save themselves some money and get some prospects for the future. Now, Dempster has been in the majors for more than 10 years and has been with one team for more than 5 of those years, which means he is allowed to veto any trade. Dempster wanted to be traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, but they weren't offering what the Cubs wanted and he was eventually traded to the Texas Rangers. But before that, Cubs GM Theo Epstein took the unusual step of allowing Dempster to listen in as he negotiated with the Dodgers to prove to Dempster that he wasn't just lying to him about the quality of the Dodgers' offer. I have to say, I don't think I have ever heard of anything like this before. You'd have to imagine that was weird for Dempster, as the team he wanted to go to was probably sitting there trying to talk down all his high points and the team he couldn't wait to leave was trying to pump his value back up. Honestly, I'm not sure I would want to listen in on that kind of thing. But, I have to say Epstein's open-door policy is rather refreshing. Also, it got the job done as otherwise Dempster may have vetoed the move to the Rangers. I really don't expect this to start a trend, because Dempster is widely seen as a very professional player and I'm not sure how many guys would be willing to sit there and listen in. Still, I would have paid good money to find out what a guy like Manny Ramirez thought he was worth.

-As much as I like trading deadlines because it is another chance to think like a GM, my favorite part of any trade deadline actually comes the following day, which is when all the beat reporters start talking about all the deals which "almost" happened. For example, on Wednesday I was reading stories saying the Red Sox almost sent Josh Beckett to about 14 different teams. I just have to laugh at some of these reports, because I don't know how much of them are actually true. Honestly, for all I know some of these baseball executives are just throwing names out there after the fact to make it sound like they were working on potential deals when in reality they spent the afternoon holed up playing Angry Birds and other GMs don't call them out on it because of some kind of code of ethics. In some ways it reminds me of those kids in college who would spend every Sunday talking about the girls they almost hooked up with the night before, even though pretty much everyone knew they never left their dorm room. However, the guys I feel the worst for are the beat writers. You know they are aware how many of these rumors are probably complete nonsense, but they have to report them on the remote chance they could be true. No one wants to be the guy who heard something, didn't report it and then watched in horror as they are scooped by someone else. The trick for fans is to weed through the nonsense for the real substance. I just can't help but find this all terribly ironic, considering team executives are always chastising fans for making up trade rumors. Yes, fans' fake trades may be even more extreme, but at least they don't get put in the paper.

-On Thursday the USA men's team played Nigeria in basketball. The game was close... for a couple minutes, anyway. After that the US team decided that enough was enough, started paying attention and ended up blowing Nigeria out of the water by 83 points. (No, this win does not put the current squad on equal footing with the Dream Team. Those guys would have beaten Nigeria if they played today.) In the wake of this crushing defeat some people are accusing the US of running the score up and saying this is exactly the reason why NBA players shouldn't be sent to the Olympics. While I agree that jacking 3's when up by 60 in the 4th quarter was not the kind of sportsmanship the Olympics would usually try and pretend they care about (more on this point later), I don't have much of a problem with it. You can only play who is on the schedule and the US coaches did their best to minimize the damage, sitting the big guns for most of the second half. It is not their fault Nigeria doesn't play much defense and doesn't have the skills to keep up on offense. If anything Olympic officials should be going the other way and wondering how the hell Nigeria qualified for this tournament in the first place. Watching this I couldn't help but wonder about the state of International basketball. The NBA loves to say basketball is the most-played game in the world, even more that soccer, but watching Nigeria's team of 'professionals' I suddenly realized that they never say it is played well in any of these places.

-On that same theme, I was amused by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's stance this week when he said that the league plans to push for football to be included in the Olympics. This story comes up every Summer Games (mostly because the NFL can't stand being ignored for 17 days, even if it only happens every four years.) Again, I do not get the NFL's insistence that is a global game, because history has proven it is not. I think the one game a year they play in Europe has made it abundantly clear the rest of the world is not interested in our silly little game. Yes, the annual game in London is sold out, but I would contend the stadium is 80% full of ex-pats. NFL Europe was a failure and I have not heard of any urgency to give that league another try. Also, I don't know that America is all that excited about sharing our wonderful sport. We're extremely good at it and we don't care if the rest of the world wants to try it or not. Hell, we don't even accept Canadian football because they did "odd" things like expand the field. Goodell claims that the sport is played in 64 countries world-wide, which should be enough to get consideration for future Olympics. Alright, just because you have players from 64 countries on various college rosters, that doesn't mean they actually play football in those places. They might play something which they think is football, but I'm going to guess it comes up woefully short of the real thing. If you thought our basketball team made things look too easy, you can only imagine how lopsided a football game it would be if we sent professional football players to the Olympics. Goodell would be better off just making fake Gold medals, handing them out to the theoretical squad and saving everyone the time.

-Some people say the reason Goodell is so adamant about expanding the game globally is because he is worried the league has explored every revenue source here in the US. Well, it doesn't look like he should be too worried, because earlier this week the Cleveland Browns were sold for $1 billion. Now, due to a variety of reasons I have kept en eye on the Browns ever since they were reborn into the NFL in 1999. What I have seen in that time has not been pretty. They have been either unlucky, inept or at some points both - only making the playoffs once in that period of time. So, if the Browns are worth $1 billion than the league is doing just fine. The only thing to give Clevelanders pause is that the man who just bought the team currently owns a piece of the Pittsburgh Steelers (the Browns' rival) and while he will be required to sell that stake, he has previously claimed to be "1,000% Steelers fan". Initially, that sounds like he might have some split allegiances, except in other interviews that same man has said he has also been both a Cowboys and Colts fan. I'm pretty sure that, like most billionaires, this guy's only allegiances are to the things he owns at the time. Also, at least he wants to own the team, which was not always a sure thing about the previous owner, who had inherited it from his father. As long as the new guy is willing to spend the money this could be very good for the Browns, provided that he doesn't come in and start changing everything just because he wants to leave his own stamp on the franchise. Then again, considering where they are, maybe changing everything wouldn't be the worst idea in the world.

-Back to the Olympics. There was a terrible controversy this week in, of all things, ladies badminton. In previous Olympics, badminton was a simple knock-out tournament. But for these games they changed the rules to a round robin tournament to determine seeding and then having the normal knock-out round start at the quarterfinal level. Going in, several team officials predicted doom and gloom, worried that players would tank matches to get better draws for the knock-out stages. Turns out they were right as four teams (two from South Korea, one from Indonesia and one from China) were sent home from the Games after appearing to throw their matches in an effort to get a more favorable seeding going forward by avoiding the best team for as long as possible. Now, I admit to only seeing the replays, but apparently in the moment it was really bad as the teams went from looking as though they had trained their whole lives for this to suddenly looking like you or I at a typical backyard cookout. (I guess their teams can at least take solace in the fact they are bad at playing poorly.) The crowd was understandably pissed because they had spent good money to watch this farce (we'll save the discussion of why you would spend money to watch badminton for another post) and Olympic officials were left red-faced. In my opinion they have no one to blame but themselves. When you change rules and leave a loophole which would actually give people an incentive to lose, you can't act surprised when a few of them do it. We fight this battle all the time in professional sports when people start losing to improve draft status. The Olympics just need to give those fans a refund and change the rules back to the way they were. People already think badminton is a marginal sport, they can't afford to have fans also question if the results are fake.

-Those expelled teams were not allowed to appeal their decisions, but I can only assume it was because they couldn't find an ATM. You see, in the Olympics, you have to pay for your appeal. Seriously. It is not even like they bill your country's Olympic committee at a later date - you have to have the cash on hand at that moment. I assume they do this so that countries are not constantly filing appeals based on nothing but pure spite, because we all know people get heated about this kind of thing. If they allowed that the Games would drag on forever. That being said, it doesn't look particularly amateurish, which is what the Olympics contends to be all about. No one actually knows how much an appeal costs, but rumors are there is a sliding scale in which appeals cost different amounts depending on the sport. (Boxing costs the most, probably because it is the most corrupt, as evidenced this week when an Azerbaijani fighter was knocked down six times in one round by his Japanese opponent and not only was awarded the round, but the fight. Reports later surfaced that Azerbaijan had offered to straight-up buy 2 gold medals for $9 million. Olympic fever, catch it!!) Still, at the end of the day the most important thing is to get the right results, which seems to happen more times than not. Even in the case of that Azerbaijani fighter the result was eventually over-turned, so the only people who lost are the people who tried to buy the medals and the boxing judges whose reputations were ruin (and considering they are boxing judges there wasn't much to begin with.) And if it costs a little extra, that's a small price to pay to forever be known as an Olympic medalist. You'd hate to lose your money and your medal.