Weekly Sporties

-One of the most annoying things in sports is when something which everyone knows is going to happen takes forever to be official. For example, as soon as cornerback Darrelle Revis started angling for a new contract just a couple of years after a long holdout to get a new deal everyone knew his days with the Jets were number because the team was in no hurry to go through that again. Well, after about a month of talking about unloading him it finally happened this week when Revis was shipped from New York to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers where, as expected, he signed a new six-year, $96 million deal which would make him the highest-paid secondary player in the history of the NFL. Even though Revis is one of the best players at his position, all of this was pretty standard for how the NFL offseason works. The thing which was interesting about the his contract is that none of that money is guaranteed. That is unheard of in this day and age. As everyone knows NFL contracts are not iron-clad and the player can be cut at any moment, so getting as much money guaranteed is the only insurance a player can get (and is the only number people pay attention to when deals are announced). On top of all this Darrelle is coming off a second serious leg injury and people wonder just how healthy he really is. The fact that Revis was willing to sign a deal without guaranteed money (though you could make the case this first year is guaranteed because it is not like Tampa Bay will cut him this year) either speaks to his hubris or a grander plan to eventually make it to free agency sooner rather than later. Either way, he's taking a tremendous risk because there is no way he sees anything close to that $96 million. Normally I would be enthusiastic about a player signing a deal which means if he wants money he has to earn it on the field, but when there are so many long-term health ramifications with football I really think players need to get while the getting is good. All of that being said, as a Patriots fan the main thing I am feeling is happy that Revis is out the division.

-Speaking of deals which aren't worth the paper they are written on, this week the Presidents of all the ACC schools got together and approved a grant of rights deal lasting through the 2027-2028 seasons. What this means is that for the next 14 years if any school leaves the ACC they will forced to give all their profits, including local TV and stadium revenue, to the ACC. If they stay in the league they keep that money but if they leave they essentially become a non-profit organization. If that sounds like an extreme clause, that is kind of the point. The premise behind it is the penalties for leaving a conference haven't been steep enough and if a conference wants to protect itself from having all its teams raided it was going to have to get creative. This all sounds really good in theory, right up to the part where I read that three other conferences - the Pac-12, Big Ten and Big-12 - all have similar agreements in place. I'm not sure when the Big-12 put their version of this idea in place, but it certainly hasn't helped them from getting pillage over the last couple of seasons. (Also, you'll notice there is nothing about adding teams, so these conferences obviously have no problem snatching teams from other leagues.) In addition to that little bit of hypocrisy I can't help but feel like if a team really wants to leave a conference it will still be able to find a way out of this deal. These college Presidents have to know the landscape of college athletics is continually changing and they are going to have an opportunity to make even more money in another conference before too long, so there is probably some language in the deal which lets these teams escape without mortgaging their futures. And since the current conference alignments are built on a foundation of sand, hope and toothpicks as soon as one team gets out without stiff penalties it will just open the floodgates a second time. So, I appreciate what these conferences were trying to do, I just think at this point conference realignment has become as part of the game as marching bands at halftime.

-They say it takes a big man to admit when they've made a mistake and the more public the mistake the bigger the man needs to be. Well, apparently Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert is a pretty big man, because this week he re-hired Mike Brown just two seasons after they fired him. Admittedly, this was kind of a strange deal from the start because back in 2010 Brown had just taken the Cavs on a couple of deep playoff runs but the relationship between him and LeBron James had become strained to the point it was no longer going to work. Since James was entering free agency Gilbert thought firing Brown would be the thing which got James to stick in Cleveland. It obviously didn't work and Gilbert found himself without Brown or James the following season. So, in some ways this re-hiring put Cleveland back where they should have been in 2011. However, the only reason I don't love the idea of bringing back the most successful coach in team history is that LeBron James can opt out of his contract after next season and there is already talk he wants to return to Cleveland and mend the fences in his hometown. If he didn't like Brown three seasons ago, what makes you think he will be itching to be coached by him in 2015? You have to imagine Dan Gilbert is aware of this, so in some ways it is like he is doing the decision over again and picking Brown over James. I have to say, that is not the choice I would make. I know last week I said bending over to make James happy didn't get the Cavs a title, but it got them a hell of a lot closer than they will be with Brown, Kyrie Irving and bunch of scrubs. After all, Brown coached Kobe Bryant after LeBron and didn't win a title with him either, so it is not like Mike Brown is Phil Jackson (who shot down rumors he was interested in the Cavaliers job as soon as they came up). In the NBA players matter a hell of a lot more than coaches ever will, which makes it feel like Gilbert got the ultimate re-set button in life and somehow still managed to get this one wrong. He may need to be an even bigger man in the not-too-distant future.

-The only thing worse than having an owner who treats your favorite team like a business and makes decisions based on money instead of what will help the franchise win is one who actually thinks they know a damn thing about how to run a team. I appreciate that most owners are wonderful businessmen and they wouldn't be in the position to buy this very expensive toy if they didn't know a lot about how the world works. Still, that doesn't mean they know a damn thing about sports. The latest example of this is awful Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria. When he's not tricking the city of Miami into building him an expensive new stadium and then selling off all the high-profile free agents he bought after just one year, Loria apparently fancies himself a bit of a baseball guru. The other day the Marlins were scheduled to play a double-header against the Twins. Veteran Ricky Nolasco was scheduled to pitch game one and high-level prospect Jose Fernandez was scheduled to pitch in game two. Loria thought it would be warmer for game one and didn't want to risk his young prospect throwing in cold weather and getting hurt, so he demanded the pitchers swap spots (it actually was warmer for the night game, meaning Loria sucks at weather predictions as well). Reportedly this angered several member of the Marlins, who think Loria should keep his opinions to himself. Normally I would crap on baseball players - saying they are just being too sensitive and this has more to do with the fact they don't like people messing with their regimented schedules than actual concern for Nolasco or Fernandez. The thing is that Loria has lost the benefit of the doubt on this one. I mean, just because you buy a computer it doesn't mean you suddenly know how to build one, so why would a baseball team be any different? Loria has run that franchise into the ground on multiple occasions and they literally can't give away tickets so while he would be the first person I would call if I were looking for ways to ruin my franchise, he can keep his opinions on how to run one to himself.

-The first night of the NFL Draft was on Thursday and as always it was one of the most fun days of the year as teams dealt picks and drafted players at surprising times. Still, for all the fun there was one thing which annoyed me. You see, for years the people calling the draft have had the habit of "tipping" the selection, which means they "guess" who the player was going to be before the Commissioner made it to the microphone. Of course, they could guess with such amazing accuracy because someone had already told them who had been picked. In an effort to add a little more spontaneity to the proceeding the NFL put out a mandate that the analysts were "discouraged" from revealing the picks before they happened (if you really wanted to know you could easily find out because guys who don't work for ESPN were under no such obligations). Now, for the most part the ESPN crew was good about this, but what I kept noticing was the many times when the crew knew who the pick was going to be and then had to pretend they didn't know. Look, there is a reason these guys are sportscasters, not actors. These analysts would spend two or three minutes talking about a prospect and then you could see the fear in their eyes as they realized they had guessed the pick correctly and then have to throw out a bunch more names, explaining why those players would be just as good of a fit with the team in a desperate attempt to throw everyone off the scent, but it was too late. It would have been funny to watch if it wasn't quite so sad. Once again, ESPN got it all wrong - it's not that we don't want guys like Adam Schefter to tell us the picks on Twitter because if you follow Schefter on Twitter that is what you expect him to do, so having the picks revealed to us early is our choice. We also don't mind if the obvious choice is talked about. But what your average viewer doesn't want is Chris Berman smugly revealing the pick as the Commissioner is walking to the mike like he knows anything about football. Not that it matters anyway because everything the NFL touches is rating gold. So, rather than fix something which isn't broken, how about getting back to that whole, "head injuries" issue because that one is a long way from being solved?

-Last week I talked about how NASCAR had come down on both cars in the Penske racing team for having non-conforming pieces on their cars. Well, at the time I forgot to mention just how fickle the NASCAR inspectors can be. I mean, these guys leave almost no margin for error. This week no one got a harsher reminder of that than Matt Kenseth, who won last weekend's race but then failed the post-race inspection and got crushed in penalties. The problem was a connecting brace in his engine which was about 3 grams too light. Actually it was less than 3 grams - approximately the weight of a dime. And for that Kenseth's team lost all the points it got for the race, he was stripped of the pole award (showing how much it bothered him Kenseth went out and won the pole for this week), his crew chief was suspended for six races and team owner Joe Gibbs got his ownership license suspended, which means he isn't allowed to gain any owner point for the next six races either. Obviously, Kenseth is saying this was a mistake and unfortunate but the punishment doesn't fit the crime. As you may expect, I agree with him because all that seems excessive to me. I understand that a lighter car is a faster car, but I'm not totally sure lightening your car by 3 grams makes that much of a difference, especially when drivers' weights can vary wildly (you'd be better off having them simply have a smaller breakfast that morning). All of these penalties for minor infractions just make me wonder if NASCAR has painted itself into a corner. The unofficial motto for this sport is "if you an't cheating, you ain't trying", so guys are always trying to get away with modifications which push the term 'legal' to the very limit. At some point someone is gong to blatantly break the rules by a hell of a lot more than what Kenseth's team did, so what is going to happen to them? It is not like NASCAR has the authority to put people in jail. Though I can say this, if someone ever does end up in jail for cheating I would lie about what put you there, because I'm pretty sure "being off a dime" has an entirely different meaning behind bars.

-One of the easiest jobs in sports is working in the marketing department for a pro sports team. Yes, the hours can be weird and if the team is not performing well on the field you probably have to do more work than you first expect. However, at that level the leagues pretty much sell themselves so most of your work is done for you. You just need to wrangle a player for appearances and then stay the hell out of the way. If you really want to see marketing majors working hard you need to look to the minor leagues, where promotions are vital to a team's success and the smaller the team the more outrageous the stunt has to be. Fledgling teams are always desperate for attention and I can't imagine a more desperate situation than trying to sell minor-league hockey in Arizona, where most residents barely know there is a pro team. This week the Arizona Sundogs of the CHL were looking to increase season ticket sales and came up with a bizarre way to bring attention to this fact. The team's owner, GM, captain and director of marketing raised themselves up in a scissor lift, taking sleeping bags, a large umbrella to ward off the Arizona sun and a pulley system to get food up and send waste down, saying they would not come out of the lift until the team sold 300 season tickets. They went up last Sunday at noon, vowing to stay up for as long as it took but probably expecting to be down in a few hours. They finally reached their goal and were mercifully released late Friday afternoon. I'm just wondering how many times during those long five days they conspired to kill whoever came up with this particular idea? The sad part is the fact the promotion was such a failure for so long ended up getting them more media attention than the original stunt ever could, so it is probably just a matter of time before they try something like this again. Next time I just hope they stage their stunt at a place which doesn't require anyone to go to the bathroom in a bucket.