Weekly Sporties

-During my time working at Gillette Stadium, one thing was made abundantly clear - the Patriots biggest rival was not the Dolphins or the Jets, it was the other professional sports teams in this city. It actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it. The average fan only has so much money to spend on merchandise and tickets and even though they can be fans of all their local teams, they are bound to love one above the rest. So, like children trying to get into their rich parents' good graces, the teams may outwardly love each other, but secretly love it when they can stick it to one another. That is why I was not surprised when I heard the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL were getting some push back from the Baltimore Orioles regarding their request that the Orioles switch their Thursday, September 5th contest to a day game so the Ravens could open the season at home that night, as the NFL has been doing for the last couple of years. You see, the Ravens and Orioles share a parking lot and it just isn't big enough to host both games at the same time. However, the Orioles are flying in from an away game the night before and who knows what time they may actually get home. Playing at 1 o'clock is not something you want to do if you didn't get to bed until 3 AM. Plus, the Orioles are projected to be pretty good so they could be in the thick of a pennant race and the game could be really important. Of course, these are all convenient excuses to mask the real issue - the Orioles were there first and don't like acting like second fiddle. Now, reports are the league is going to have the Ravens open up on the road instead, which is exactly the kind of fall-on-the-sword move you expect from someone who wants to look more gracious while really playing the martyr. Here's what I don't get: why can't they just play on Friday? They can't do Saturday because of a law giving college football that day (really, there is a law on record about this), but there is nothing about the rest of the week. They have only been doing this Thursday night opener for a few years and they even moved it last year for the Democratic National Convention. So, making the Super Bowl Champions open on the road is really being done to make MLB look bad. I can't imagine why the Orioles weren't in more of a hurry to accommodate the Raven's request.

-Fighting with Major League Baseball to uphold a tradition which has only been around for a few years was not the only think the NFL accomplished this week. They also had their rules committee meet and handle some business. First was abolishing the "Tuck Rule" which people around here know because it was rule which kept the Patriots alive during the infamous "Snow Bowl" game against the Raiders in 2001. I'm fine with the rule going away because it was another judgement call that an official had to make and the fewer of those that exist the better. (Just an aside to Raiders fans: no, this does not mean the Patriots' Super Bowl win that year is invalidated. You still had multiple opportunities to stop the Patriots on that drive and in overtime and you didn't get it done. No football game is lost because of one bad play. Also, it was over a decade ago, quit your whining.) To me the more interesting rule which was enacted was the new policy which states that running backs are no longer allowed to lower their heads and use the crown of their helmets against a defender like a battering ram. As you can imagine, offensive players are furious at this with former players like Emmitt Smith saying it was crazy to expect a player to keep his head up when a players was coming in trying to tackle him. Meanwhile, I really like this rule. First off, it is about time the NFL implemented some rules to protect the defense. I mean, there are dozens of rules about where and exactly how hard you are allowed to take down certain offensive players, so putting one on the books designed to make playing the game a little more safe for the guys on defense is probably over-due. Still, it is more about spirit than actually implementing it because the simple fact is this is one of those rules which comes in to play about once every 10 games. Your average NFL running back doesn't have time to build up that much momentum. It is as close to the least they could do as possible and even that is too much for offensive players.

-While the NFL is at least trying to pretend like it cares about player safety on the other end of the spectrum we have Olympic boxing, which this week announced it will do away with headgear starting at the 2016 Games. This will allow them to go with a more professional style and scoring system in hopes of attracting boxers who wish to pursue a career in boxing following the Games (because headgear stopped guys like Evander Holyfield and Roy Jones, Jr). It is amazing to me that in this day and age of increased concussion awareness there is actually a sport which thinks less protective gear is the answer. Of course, they found a person who said less headgear would actually make the sport safer because if boxers has less headgear they wouldn't be so inclined to take as many blows to the head, arguing that one knockout punch actually does less damage than a series of less-forceful blows that the boxers thinks they aren't doing any damage because of the headgear. (I would argue that you could always wear the headgear and teach boxers to duck more, but that's just me.) I can't stand it when sports do this kind of thing - claiming a move is designed for safety when what boxing is really after is more knockouts. Boxing is boring enough when you have two lightweights dancing around for round after round, removing the threat of a knockout in the heavyweight division has made Olympic boxing largely irrelevant and I think when they saw wrestling, one of the staples of the Games since they began, taken off the docket for the 2020 Games boxing officials got scared and desperate for ways to more their sport more interesting. Someone should tell them that lawsuits from people who are suffering from debilitating injuries as a result of playing your game is not something the Olympic Committee is going to be in favor of. Besides, I turned away from boxing not because of the lack of big hits but because the judging feels so corrupt and the Olympics may be the worst-judged boxing matches of all time. Then again those are the people who now run the sport, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised they are so willing to throw their athletes' safety under the bus and not address their biggest problem. Maybe taking them out of the Games wouldn't be the worst thing for everyone involved.

-If you gave the average sports fan the option of swapping their current team's owner for another one, most people would pick Mark Cuban for that swap. The reason he is so popular is that he runs his team like most fans think they would - he spoils his players to attract the best free agents, values winning over making a profit, sits courtside to yell at refs and still dresses like the average fan in jeans and a t-shirt. Also, he doesn't stand on ceremony, often saying what he feels. This can both help and hurt him, as was the case this week when his Dallas Mavericks welcomed the Oklahoma City Thunder to town with former Maverick Derek Fisher along for the ride. Fisher was with the Mavericks to start this season, but wasn't getting much playing time and asked the team for his release so he could spend more time with his family back in Los Angeles, where he has an ill daughter. The team granted his release, but by February Fisher felt comfortable enough to return to the court. Rather than call the Mavericks, Fisher signed with the Thunder, who have a much better record and a legitimate chance to win a Championship. It was a very cheesy move for a guy who already had five rings. (I'll be honest, I've never been a fan of Fisher. He's the Jorge Posada of basketball - riding the coattails of much better players to rings and somehow translating that into people thinking he's better than he is, even though he had opportunities to lead teams on his own and failed.) Cuban didn't appreciate the lack of a phone call and joined in the rest of the Mavericks fans in booing Fisher every time he touched the ball during the game. Some say this behavior is below an owner. I say it is exactly what he should be doing because Fisher's slight was more personally directed at Cuban and his team than anyone in the stands. Also, unlike some people I don't see any way this hurts the Mavericks in free agency because they still play in a first-class arena in a state with no income tax. That is really the kind of thing all players care about, definitely more than whether or not Cuban boos a former player in his return.

-As you know, I don't usually get into baseball until all my other sport viewing options are done for the season, so it should come as no surprise to learn I haven't been watching any Spring Training games this year. In fact, they only come to my attention is something wacky happens since a person standing totally out of place is pretty much the only thing which makes an inter-squad game which don't count at all interesting. The good news for baseball is that one of the fun quirks of Spring Training is that occasionally Major League Baseball uses it as a place to experiment with new rules, so wacky stuff happens quite frequently. That was the case the other day when an injury forced an umpire to call balls and strikes from behind the pitcher. You see, the home plate umpire had taken a ball of the hand and broken it, which meant he needed to be removed from the game. But, rather than wait the 10 minutes while the emergency umpire got all his gear on, the second base ump decided to move the game along and took up a position behind the pitcher to call balls and strikes from back there, which isn't usually done beyond the tee-ball level because it is harder to tell where the ball crossed the plate from 60 feet away. As you can imagine it was not the smoothest transition, as the ump clearly unnerved the pitcher by standing there and was asked to get out of the shortstop's way more than once. It only lasted for a couple of batters before the replacement umpire was ready and the rest of the game went on without incident. Obviously, this is not an idea which has any legs or will be around for the long haul. Still, I found it interesting for this reason - it proves even umpires think Spring Training games are stupid and don't need to last even one second longer than necessary. Any rule which speeds up baseball is alright in my book.

-Speaking of speeding up games, after watching the first two days of March Madness, I would like to propose a new rule of my own: I think the NCAA should lessen the number of timeouts teams get in the second half of games. I came to this conclusion after watching a game in which the refs stopped play every 10 seconds to make sure there is the correct amount of time remaining on the clock, which is essentially a free timeout for both teams anyway, and then the coach who got the ball called yet another timeout to draw up a play. Look, I'm not complaining about the refs wanting to make sure they have the time right. At the end of a basketball game every second is precious and a team having 6 seconds to work with is a lifetime compared to only having 4, so they need to get that right. But it is no secret that the end of basketball games take way too long. Between fouling and consecutive timeouts the final minute of a game can actually take closer to 10 minutes of real-time. That is why I don't think coaches really need that many timeouts to begin with. Besides, it is not like they ever use them during the first 18 minutes of the half. Since there are a number of timeouts mandated by TV commercial breaks both coaches get more than enough time to draw up a play without wasting one of their own, so they simply save them for the last :30 seconds and then use them all at once. Under my new rule you would get all but two timeouts taken away once there were under two minutes in the game. However, refs would still be allowed to go to the replay screen for close plays and make sure the clock is accurate. It wouldn't make the game infinitely faster, but definitely speed up the proceedings a little bit. Plus, coaches would have to really think about when to use those two timeouts wisely, which would add a small degree of difficulty, since having 20 timeouts at your disposal allows you to constantly correct mistakes, even though it makes the people watching at home think their biggest mistake was turning the game on in the first place.

-It is not uncommon to find out a player from a foreign country is actually older than he originally says. I've talked about this before, but an 18 year-old prospect is infinitely more appealing to a sports organization than a 20 year-old one because scouts and coaches think they have just that much more time to develop them into the superstar they know they will be and then keep them on the roster for an extra couple of years. It happens so frequently in baseball people hardly bat an eyelash anymore when a player's true age comes to light and at this point the age a player is given in the program should have quotes around it. However, that usually happens when a player comes from a foreign countries where record keeping is not as thorough, not the US. That is what makes the recent revelation that "19" year-old UCLA freshman forward Shabazz Muhammad is actually a year older than originally thought such a strange situation. Muhammad was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Las Vegas, not normally the kind of places where keeping track of the year you were born should be a problem. This is just one of a few interesting facts in a long article from the Los Angeles Times about Muhammad's father, which also included the tidbit that his father picked the name Shabazz because he thought it would make his son more marketable around the world. In fact, pretty much every thing Ron Holmes did in the last few years was designed to get his son to the NBA and make him a superstar. (This would be the ugly side of parental support.) The question now is whether this long-standing deception will hurt Muhammad's draft stock more than simply being a 20 year-old freshman would. My guess is that it won't considering this is such a bad year for draft prospects, but I'm sure there are some basketball executives out there who are reminding themselves that when you draft a player you are also drafting his family. And from some of the things I read in this article, that would scare me more than a false birth certificate ever would.