Weekly Sporties

-Once New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton was suspended for the upcoming season, people began to wonder how the team was going to handle the coaching situation. Then early in the week the name Bill Parcells came up. Now, Parcells and Payton have a long history, as Payton worked under Bill when both were with the Cowboys. This makes a tremendous amount of sense. Parcells is 71 years old and probably has an itch to coach again, but doesn't want to jump back all the way in. By taking over the Saints in an interim basis he can scratch that itch and not have to worry about burning himself out for years to come. Plus, unlike most head coaches, he isn't going in to a situation where he will be expected to rebuild the franchise from the ground up. The Saints were a playoff team last year and have most of their key pieces coming back, minus the players who have yet to be suspended for the bounty scandal, so Parcells will be walking in to a more stocked cabinet than ever before. But, as a bonus, no one is expecting much from the team this year because there was so much upheaval this offseason, so if Bill does any better than 8-8 he'll be seen as a savior. The only thing he has to worry about is the fact his Hall of Fame clock will be re-set, because you have to be retired for 5 years to be eligible. However, considering Bill was eligible this year and didn't make it I figure he has nothing to lose. I don't even care about the Saints and I want this to happen.

-Late in the week it was announced that the Los Angeles Dodgers were finally being sold to a group of investors, the most visible of whom was Magic Johnson. No one is sure how much of his own money Johnson put up, but he is not going to be involved in the day-to-day business of the team, just help with recruiting free agents. (Seeing how well that has worked out for the Nets with Jay-Z, considered me skeptical.) Anyway, everyone thought Magic's group had the best chance to get the team so that wasn't much a surprise, but the price tag was. The team was sold for nearly $2 billion. That number blows me away. First of all, even though they just signed a huge new TV deal in the lucrative Los Angeles market I have a hard time believing the team is worth that much. Secondly, I just can't believe that former owner Frank McCourt is going to come out of this smelling like roses. McCourt bought the Dodgers 8 years ago for $400 million and promptly ran them into the ground. He is reviled in Los Angeles and attendance at the stadium plummeted to historic lows. He did major damage to what should be one of the flagship franchises in baseball and is somehow, even after paying off all the debt he built up, is going to make over a billion dollars in profit. In sales they always say all you need is one sucker. Well, it appears McCourt found a whole group of them willing to pool their money.

-While we're talking about MLB, their season finally got underway the other morning, not that anyone noticed. The A's and Mariners played a two-game series in Japan to kick off the regular season Well, sort of. After playing the short series, the teams are back in the United States for more spring training games before starting the season for real next week, which just makes the whole situation that much stranger. Now, Major League Baseball is far from the only sports league which tries to elbow its way into foreign markets. Hockey also starts its season overseas and the NFL exports one game a year to London. But, just like with those other sports, I can't figure out why. Japan has a very good baseball league of their own, so it is not like they need or want our brand of baseball. If you want to send a few teams over early in the spring to play a couple of exhibition games that would be fine, but there is no need to take meaningful games away from the fans who actually live here and are your loyal customers. And it is not like anyone could actually watch the games, because they were on at 3 AM West Coast time. I understand it is important to have a global brand to increase revenues, but you shouldn't be doing it at the expense of the people who care about your team the other 98% of the time.

-Given new information which has come out regarding concussions in hockey, specifically the brain damage which is being done to NHL enforcers who get into fights all the time, Sports Illustrated recently conducted a poll of 202 NHL players asking whether or not the league should ban fighting in the game. 99.5% of the players said fighting should not be banned, with literally only one player in favor of it. The result is hardly surprising, considering the mentality most players have. It really doesn't matter the sport, when it comes to issues of safety, professional athletes pretty much have to be saved from themselves. That is why I would love to know who the one player in favor of banning fighting was. I'm sure the survey was conducted anonymously because it was also completely voluntary so we will probably never know, but you have to imagine whoever it was is currently very paranoid about all the other players finding out he is the only guy in favor of banning fighting. Just tells you all you need to know about hockey players when the one guy with some forward-thinking is worried about being outed as a pansy.

-As the Final Four gets ready to go, everyone is marveling at the talent on the University of Kentucky team. They have two great players who will most likely be among the top-five picks in the upcoming NBA draft with Anthony Davis probably being the first player taken. Because of this talent someone on radio this week wondered if the Wildcats could beat a bad NBA team, specifically the Washington Wizards. Gary Williams, who used to coach at Maryland, has said he thinks it could happen if the Wizards were playing their third game in three nights and the game was played on the Kentucky campus. Even then I don't see it happening. Yes, the Wizards are pretty bad and they would love to add Davis by winning the draft lottery. But with that said you have to remember a very simple thing: the Wildcats probably have 4 guys who will end up on NBA rosters. The Wizards have 13 guys who are already NBA players. Never forget, the last guy off the bench for the worst NBA team is still 1,000% better at basketball than you or I will ever be. People have been saying for a week they wouldn't be surprised to see Kentucky lose to Louisville and they have 1 marginal NBA guy, so color me skeptical they could take an actual NBA roster. The Wizards may be bad, but they would win that game by 25 points, easily.

-Anthony Davis will probably be another in the long line of basketball players who are only in college for one season. Joining him in the NBA draft is Austin Rivers, son of Celtics coach Doc Rivers. I have to say, I'm a little surprised to see Austin come out, because during all the Duke games I saw this year I did not see a guy ready to play at the next level and you would have thought his father would have advised him to stay at Duke. However, that is neither here nor there: what I wanted to comment on was Austin's conjecture in an interview this week that he would love to get drafted by the Celtics and have his dad coach him. This is a bad idea on every level. Seriously, I remember intramural teams in junior high where parents coached their kids and it rarely went well. You have no idea how many kids were begging to be on different teams by mid-season. Austin needs to find his own path and he's never going to do that in his father's shadow. Fortunately, Austin is expected to be long gone by the time the Celtics get around to picking in this April's draft, but even if he is there I really don't think Danny and the Celtics should take him. It will be the best for everyone involved.

-The Masters is coming up next week, which means we were about due for someone in the media to point out that Augusta National Golf Club still doesn't have any women members. And, right on cue at the end of the week came a story about how the CEO of IBM, one of the tournament's main sponsors, is always given automatic membership to the club and IBM's new CEO happens to be a woman. Now, there are very few things about which I would be considered conservative, but this issues happens to be one of them. There are plenty of women-only gym across the country and you don't see people up in arms about them every year, so the double-standard of insisting Augusta National must have women members drives me a little bit crazy. However, these are the precedents the club has set and to go back on them now would seem very hypocritical. But what makes Augusta National unique is that it probably is the only place in the world that has so much money they can get away with not giving a shit how hypocritical it looks. For example, when a woman's group wanted to organize a boycott of sponsors of the tournament, The Masters didn't skip a beat and just went ahead as scheduled, holding the tournament without any sponsors. Frankly, as a viewer it was kind of awesome because there were no commercials. So, yes, the club should probably join the 21st century and finally have women members. But, rest assured, telling them that they have to do it is the quickest way to make sure it never happens.