Weekly Sporties

-Last week I told you about the new autograph scandal which has enveloped Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel and reopened the debate about whether or not college athletes should be paid for their signatures. Well, even though I continue to think Manziel won't be punished by the NCAA that hasn't stopped many other schools from overreacting to the scandal, because that is their move. First, Texas A&M has told any fans coming to fan appreciation night that they won't be allowed to bring any gear for the players to sign and will instead be given team-issued postcards for players to autograph. But if you think that sounds like it will suck all the fun out of the event, the University of Louisville has taken it a step further, announcing the team won't be signing any autographs at fan appreciation day at all. First off, that doesn't sound very appreciative. But, secondly it feels like these schools are wildly missing the point. Yes, there may be the odd memorabilia dealer mixed in the crown, but for the most part autograph day is about the little kids in the stands, many of whom would love to one day attend their favorite school. To deny them the chance to get an autograph from their favorite player is not only mean, it is incredibly short-sighted. Sure the odds one of these kids will turn into a stud prospect are very low, but the chances they could turn out to be a wealthy alum is much higher. The way college athletics work there is no telling which programs may have bubbled up by the time these kids are ready to pick a college and plenty of kids decide which school to attend based on that. You need every advantage you can get and if you think being snubbed out of an autograph as a child is a flimsy reason to not attend a college as an adult than you clearly haven't been through the college application process in a while. (I certainly ignored plenty of schools for lesser infractions.) Plus, I think the schools are overlooking how much fun this can be for the players. For about 90% of your average college football roster, fan appreciation night is the last time anyone is going to want their autograph so this rule hurts them as well. So, the NCAA needs to make sure they aren't throwing the baby out with the bathwater unless the real lesson they want student-athletes to learn is how to blow a tiny problem completely out of proportion.

-While the NCAA is allowing a small controversy to gather up all the headlines the NFL is attacking one of their biggest issues head-on. For all the talk that steroids in baseball have been garnering lately a lot of people seem to accept the idea that most NFL players are on some kind of performance enhancing drug. What's even stranger is that most of them seem to be fine with it. But, to their credit, the NFL isn't among that group and this week they announced they are going to start taking blood samples from 40 players a week and begin testing for Human Growth Hormone. (Oddly one of the first step of this plan is to give ex-players HGH. Apparently they want to see what happens with their testosterone levels since many ex-players are still in good shape and medicine impacts people differently. I give them credit for giving this so much thought but giving people PEDs does seem like a strange way to start anti-PED program.) Currently, there is just one issue holding up the agreement and that is Commissioner Roger Goodell. You see, Goodell has a very low approval rating among the players and currently he is both the judge and jury for any player facing a PED suspension. The players want an agreement in place stating any appeal for a positive drug test will be heard by an independent third party before they sign up for extra testing which not only seems very reasonable, it actually seems like something which should have been in place already. How can the person handing out the suspensions also be in charge of deciding whether or not the suspension should be reduced? Seriously, how was this not addressed in the last lock-out? The problem for the players is that since the collective bargaining agreement is already in place for the next few years they really don't have much to bargain with. Still, I hope that Roger Goodell sees this for the opportunity that it is. Goodell may not be very popular with the players but he is just as unpopular with the fans. This is his chance to do something which appears magnanimous by giving up some power for the overall good of the game. If he conceded this to the players in exchange for a stronger steroid testing policy I think it may get him some good will with fans and at least start to fix his tattered image. It's not even that big of a concession. I mean, which is more important to him - getting steroids out of the game or being able to suspend players with no checks or balances. You know what? Don't answer that.

-This is actually a huge week for professional sports in America dealing with what I think are some of their biggest issues because after years of harping about how Major League Baseball needs to expand instant replay in the game or face losing even more credibility with younger fans, on Thursday MLB announced they have proposed sweeping changes to their replay policy which will allow everything short of balls and strikes to be looked at. The policy is expected to be passed at the owners' meeting in November and could be in place by next year's playoffs. Under the new rule managers will be given one challenge to use in the first six innings and two more to be used in the final three. Managers can also still ask umpires to get together and discuss if anyone had a better angle on a play and it will not count as a challenge. Additionally, homeruns will still be automatically reviewed but rather than the umpires on the field taking a second look all replays will be handled by a central team of umpires back at MLB headquarters. While I am not a huge fan of the challenge system (I think the college football system is the best one - there is a replay official who looks at any questionable call and buzzes down to the officials only if they need more time to keep looking. However, I have to admit it will be funny the first time a manager sleeps through a blown call and isn't woken up in time to challenge it), I will totally take these changes. First all, this will help speed the game up. I know going to the replay may take a couple minutes, but it will certainly be faster than a manager out on the field, arguing with an umpire to the point of getting ejected and then making a bigger scene because he has to get his money's worth. But more than that these changes are necessary because when the people in the stands can take out their phones to see that the umpire just got a call wrong but the guys behind the plate can't, your sport has credibility issues. Above all else sports fans want two things - to be entertained and to go home knowing their team won or lost based on how they played, not what the umpires thought they saw. It may have taken them longer than it should have to get to this point, but while MLB can't control the first one they are finally taking step to make sure the second one happens every night.

-But, if you thought baseball's issues regarding steroid stories were done for this news cycle you clearly forgot that Alex Rodriguez is still hanging around, which means there is always another story coming. When the list of athletes who got supplements from Biogenesis was first leaked to the media there were three names blacked out. However it wasn't long before it was revealed that one of the blocked-out names was Ryan Braun, which caused the initial media firestorm. Late in the week "60 Minutes" came out with a report which claims that it was associates of Rodriguez who made sure Braun's name was discovered by the press. If you are wondering why Rodriguez would want Braun's name associated with this scandal the answer is quite simple - this way he wouldn't be the biggest star in the story. Sure, Rodriguez plays in a larger media market than Braun and has won more individual awards, but a lot of people were still annoyed that Braun had his first positive steroid test overturned on what felt like a technicality, so if anyone was going to deflect some of the attention away from A-Rod, it was Braun. It was a cold but calculated move. (Of course being the only player to appeal his suspension means Alex is the only one left standing anyway, so clearly he didn't think it all the way through.) As you would expect, Rodriguez has denied having anything to do with the leaked names, which is smart. A lot of players may be annoyed by cheating players but at the end of the day many of them could understand their motives. There is no way they will respect a person who they also think is a rat. On top of that one of the other three names revealed was that of Rodriguez's teammate Francisco Cervelli, so you have to imagine that A-Rod's Yankee teammates would want nothing more to do with Alex if this were true. It is hard to imagine one baseball player doing this to another but I have to admit that when I first heard this story I thought it was totally plausible. So far it is nothing but words, however if "60 Minutes" can prove it was a member of Alex's entourage who leaked the final three names to the media Alex may want to drop that appeal a few weeks early and get the hell out of New York for a while.

-Still, it is not like every steroid issue in baseball has to involve Alex Rodriguez. Last weekend former St. Louis Cardinal player Jack Clark went on his new radio show and said a former trainer told him that not only was Albert Pujols on steroids during his time with the team but that the trainer had personally shot him up. This was big news because Pujols is one of the few baseball players where if it turned out they had been doing something illegal it would surprise me and bum me out at the same time. I know we should probably be passed that point after all that has happened, but there are some players whose reputations are still intact and I am not alone in wanting to believe some of these guys managed to stay clean. Plus, while I don't have any connection to Pujols or St. Louis, Albert always struck me as the kind of guy who actually cared about his legacy. (By the way, if it was ever revealed that Ken Griffey, Jr. took steroids that would be my nightmare scenario. My childhood would officially be destroyed and I would probably swear off baseball for good.) Anyway, the trainer quickly said the story was a lie, Pujols said he would sue Clark and the station to protect his reputation and Clark was fired from his radio show after about a week. Now, if Clark said this out of some personal beef with Albert I don't have much sympathy for him, but I have to say that as a former radio show host I do have some pity for what Clark was trying to do. It was a new show and he probably felt he had to make a splash in the market to get noticed. Plus, when you haven't done a lot of radio before it can be very intimidating. You're in this studio with a massive audio board, the phone lines are lit up and the mike is in your face, so when the producer is counting down the seconds until the show goes live you can be fill with this overwhelming sense that you have to do something worthy of all this attention. Now, the best thing you can do is remain calm, crack a joke, let the studio host take a call or two and eventually something will come up to guide the conversation from there. Clark probably would have learned this eventually but now it appears like he won't get that chance, at least not in St. Louis. The good news is that, thanks to being a journeyman player, Clark has 4 more media markets to get it right.

-They say the last thing you want to do is piss off a guy who has more money than he could ever spend because they are used to getting what they want, have the time to ruin anyone who gets in their way and they didn't make all that money by asking nicely. Well, the Sacramento Kings came very close to learning that lesson this week after it was revealed that hedge fund billionaire Chris Hansen, whose group offered nearly $100 million more than the next highest bid in an attempt to buy the Kings so he could move them to Seattle but still had his offer rejected by the NBA, gave $100,000 to an organization whose purpose was to stop the city from giving money to the team to build a new arena (the city promised the money would be given without a public vote, which is why the Sacramento ownership bid was accepted by the NBA). Hansen has since apologized for making the donation, saying it was all done in the heat of battle. I have to say, I don't think he has anything to be sorry for. (Before we go any further I will disclose that while I don't have anything against the city of Sacramento, I wanted the Sonics back in Seattle.) Sure, it makes him look petty but I still believe that the NBA completely used Hansen's ownership group to milk the city of Sacramento for the best possible deal, never had any intention of letting the team move and if I were him I would feel used and just as pissed off. On top of that I actually have a problem with these private organizations worth hundreds of millions of dollars getting public money to build arenas when several studies have shown the economic benefits for the city are never as large as the teams claim they will be. Admittedly, I doubt Hansen's donation came out of the same moral outrage. Still, this donation was hardly a drop in the bucket for a guy like this and it didn't work in the end so the only one who looks bad is the group trying to bring basketball back to Seattle. Some are saying this ended any chance Hansen will ever have to buy an NBA team, but I don't think that is true. At the end of the day he is still a billionaire who loves the sport and apparently still wants to buy a franchise, which in my mind means he will get there eventually. That's the other thing about guys with money - no door is ever really closed to them.

-For as stuffy as golf can be when it comes to rules and dress codes, the Phoenix Waste Management Open has always stood out as a shining example that the PGA Tour really does have a sense of humor buried in there somewhere. The 16th hole has really been an anomaly because the tournament builds stadium-like seating surrounding the short par-3 and it is the only place in golf where fans are encouraged to make noise. The players are booed mercilessly if they miss the green with their shot and even when they bring prizes to toss to the fans (which many of them do) it is not going to save them from being heckled if they make a bad swing. But what is also nice is that the crowd is still knowledgeable and can achieved the required "golf quiet" when it is time for players to hit. Almost everyone loves this hole and the line to get in can take hours, which is why it was so strange to that the PGA is trying to wreck some of the fun. Another one of the little traditions of the hole is the caddy race. After all the players have teed off the caddies start walking towards the green before gradually picking up speed because the crowd will place bets on which caddy will touch the green first. Some caddies go so far as to drop the bag and sprint, while others will antagonize the crowd by running all the way there and then stopping just before the green, never touching it. It's apparently too much fun for everyone because this week the PGA Tour announced that they will no longer allow caddies to race at the Waste Management Open. They claim it is a safety issue because some of the caddies were falling down and getting hurt while also saying some other caddies have complained that the circus-like atmosphere is too much. To those caddies I would just say that you don't have to run if you don't want to and if you can't take a little bit of booing than perhaps you shouldn't work in professional sports. I mean, seriously, it's all in fun and no one is suggesting they need to take this concept to every stop on the tour. You can put up with it once a year. Also, while I have seen a few guys trip during a race I have yet to hear of one serious injury happening. You know, the PGA Tour currently has about five different concepts going on all designed to speed up the pace of play surrounding golf. You would think they would be in favor of anything which has people running to the green but apparently they aren't as serious about people playing the game faster as they want us to believe.