Weekly Sporties

-Few things in sports are as confusing for fans as when a great player returns to a city where he spent the majority of his career. On the one hand you want to thank him for all his years of service and the good memories. On the other, sports are all about emotion and that guy is now the enemy, so you don't want to make him too comfortable. That is the dilemma facing Indianapolis Colts fans this weekend when Peyton Manning returns for the first time in a Denver Broncos uniform. Obviously I expect the majority of the fans to give him a thunderous ovation at the beginning but start booing once he begins to light up their secondary like he should. Still, Manning essentially put that franchise on the map, so I can understand why some fans would be conflicted about just how vigorously to boo him. They certainly can't look to their owner, Jim Irsay, for guidance because he appears just as confused at they are. This week Irsay took a few shots at Peyton, saying the organization was happy where it currently sits because the talent is more evenly-spread and then reminding people that for all the big numbers Peyton put up in the regular season he only won one Super Bowl. It seemed like an unnecessary shot but then again, Jim Irsay doesn't exactly have the track record of making the most logical decisions. Like a lot of people I couldn't figure out why he would poke the bear like that, especially when you remember that everyone agreed releasing Peyton and drafting Andrew Luck was the right course of action and it has worked out better than anyone could have hoped. However after thinking about it for a couple days I think Irsay is trying to cover up how disappointed he is. Sure, he's got a new stadium and the best young quarterback in the league but if he had known Manning was going to return to this form he could have traded the number one pick for a truckload of draft picks and surrounded Peyton with more weapons than at any point in his career. So, basically Irsay is playing the role of a guy who has remarried a wonderful woman, but still checks his ex-wife's Facebook page and wonders where it all went wrong. That kind of behavior is bad enough, but he's also making the mistake of doing it publicly where his players can see his wandering eye. Not exactly the kind of thing which inspires loyalty. All I am saying is that Irsay needs to be careful or else in a couple years Colts fans are going to be going through this all over again when Andrew Luck is playing in front of them for another team.

-I know it can be hard to believe given the way they have played in the last few season, but at one time Grambling State was one of the most successful programs in college football. An historically black college, Grambling was lead by legendary coach Eddie Robinson who owns the record for most victories by a college football coach and has sent over 100 players to the NFL, a number which would rival almost any other program in college football. Yet, unlike the usual powerhouse programs, Grambling is a small school that doesn't play in a major conference, so they don't have access to the funding that most college football programs enjoy. When the Governor of Louisiana cut the state's budget a few years ago Grambling lost around $2 million a year from its athletic program. While what would hurt any program, it nearly crippled Grambling. They've had to cut back on scholarships and dwindled the number of assistant coaches. But the biggest cut came in the form of travel expenses. Suddenly the players were being asked to travel 1,500 miles by bus to play their games, making trips which should have taken hours take days and put them at a disadvantage before they got on the field. On top of that the administration was in a legal fight with Doug Williams, Grambling's new head coach, over a contract he has signed before the budget was slashed which the school now refused to honor. When Williams was fired 2 games into this season the players finally decided that had enough and mutinied. They skipped practice and walked out on a meeting with school administrators. The school responded by firing the interim coach but the players still weren't satisfied and are using the only weapon they have by refusing to travel to Jackson State for today's game, which they will forfeit and the school will be fined. As you would expect, the two sides are engaging in quite a battle of wills at this point, with the players expecting the school to treat them like they were promised when they committed to the program while the school expects the kids to honor those commitments by playing and is threatening to revoke scholarships or not allow the players to transfer. It's quite a mess and, sadly, I think this is only the beginning. The battle lines with the NCAA are being drawn as we speak and it is only a matter of time before this scene plays out on another college campus, maybe one where the program is competing for a National Championship. I'm going to be very interested to see how the NCAA resolves this issue but given their track record I am not expecting it to be handled all that well.

-I have a love/hate relationship with cocky rich people. On the one hand I hate them because they are obviously delusional and think that just because they have money they can do whatever they want. On the other hand, they never would have acquired all that money if they hadn't been so confident and stubborn about how great they are, so you could argue they have earned the right to be so sure of themselves. Robert Pera is just that sort of guy. Pera was a hardware engineer for Apple when he decided to strike out on his own and start his own wireless company. Six years later he was a billionaire at age 34 and soon had so much money he was able to buy the ultimate rich guy toy (a professional sports franchise) when he purchased the Memphis Grizzlies in 2012. It really is an American success story and had Pera stopped there it would have been a nice tale that no one outside of Memphis would have cared about. But this week the Grizzlies owner decided he needed to prove something and challenged Bobcats owner Michael Jordan to a $1 million game of one-on-one. He even released a video of himself shooting hoops in the gym to prove his basketball skills. (It was just as sad as it sounds, by the way. It was as if the best guy in your rec league made an NBA tryout video, even though it has to be noted that he wasn't be guarded in the video.) This is all kinds of crazy because again, Pera was a hardware engineer and Michael Jordan is one of the five best basketball players ever. I don't care that Pera is 15 years younger, just last week there was a rumor floating around that Jordan was going to sign a one-day contract with the Bobcats this season so that should tell you where MJ's skill level is at the moment. Jordan, pointing out that it was a no-win situation for him (win and it's expected, lose and his reputation takes a big hit), rightfully refused the invitation. I have to admit that for as much as I understand MJ's position I would have liked to see him take Pera down a peg or two because he clearly could have used it. I would like to think that being nationally mocked for thinking he was on Jordan's level would have been enough for him but something tells me Pera has no idea the rest of the country thinks he's a joke because no one working for him would tell him about it. If he had anyone with that kind of backbone around him he never would have released the video in the first place, so once again we are reminded that money can't buy common sense.

-Speaking of love/hate relationships, a couple weeks ago I told you about the Atlanta Braves and their quest to be baseball's fun police after they had taken exception to homerun celebrations by players on both the Miami Marlins and Milwaukee Brewers. Well, with the Braves (once again) eliminated from the playoffs after the first round, there was a void which needed to be filled. Thankfully, the St. Louis Cardinals are still playing and appear all too eager to pick up where the Braves left off. This week a couple of Cardinals were annoyed when the Dodger's Yasiel Puig flipped his bat on what he thought was going to be a homerun (it wasn't, but Puig still ended up with a stand-up triple). Later, after Adrian Gonzalez drove in a run with a double he did a few fist pumps, which the Cardinals felt was a "Mickey Mouse" level celebration. Now, I'm all for showing an opponent a proper level of respect and I have no particular interest in anything the Dodgers do, but I really think the Cardinals need to come down off their high horse on this one. My first response is the most obvious - if you don't like the Dodgers celebrating than simply get them out. Secondly, I would argue that winning the game is the most satisfying response so when they dispatched the Dodgers in six games that was the best response they could have given. But the main reason I find this stance by the Cardinals so annoying is that the Dodgers didn't do anything the Cardinals haven't done themselves. Immediately after St. Louis complained about Puig the website Deadspin had a montage of Cardinal players doing all the things they were so angry with the Dodgers for doing. Your moral high ground becomes more than a little shaky when you have done all the same things as the person you are accusing of being low-class. But, here's the biggest issue of them all: I don't have any problem with how the Cardinals or Dodgers celebrate because I remember that baseball is a game and games are supposed to be fun. If you're not going to celebrate a good play when the stakes are at their highest than why are you even bothering to play at all? Honestly, you're getting paid millions of dollars to play a sport kids are playing for free, so why don't you shelve the anger and add a little perspective to the entire situation? Who knows, you may even find you play better when you're not spending so much time worrying about what the other guy is doing.

-Even though people made a big stink when wrestling was nearly cut from the Summer Olympics, the main attraction for those games are the track and field events, specifically the sprints. I can only assume it is due to the "blink and you'll miss it" nature of the events because I can't think of any other sport which would get 70,000 people to watch a race which will be over in less than 10 seconds. What makes this interest in track even more confusing is the fact that the sport is also incredibly dirty. The sport has a long history of athletes being disqualified and stripped of their medals to the point that no one is surprised when a track star fails a drug test, yet somehow track has remained as popular as ever. Only cycling has a worse reputation for cheating athletes and somehow track is only getting more exposure thanks to guys like Usain Bolt. Of course, even Bolt isn't above questioning, so many eyebrows were raised this week when a report came out which contended that the the Jamaican track team wasn't drug tested from the beginning of 2013 until the Summer Games. As you would expect Jamaican officials were quick to shoot down the report as the bitter ramblings of a scorned employee, but this is hardly the first time suspicion has been raised about Bolt and his teammates, as track legend Carl Lewis once publicly question if the team was on the up-and-up. Track fans will be quick to point out that the team was tested vigorously at the Games and that those tests are supposed to be some of the toughest in the world. I would counter that by reminding them that Lance Armstrong competed in the Olympics and never failed a drug test even though that guy was apparently on drugs at all times. (Once again this makes me question if we are just slowly walking to an era in which all drugs are legal in sports and athletes are divided by what they are taking rather than by their skill level.) But the bigger issue is just how many more of these kinds of hits can track take. No one cared when cyclists who popped up for one year won the Tour de France and then disappeared forever after a cheating scandal, it was only when Lance Armstrong failed that people got disgusted with the sport. Finding out a popular sprinter like Bolt was lying to us the whole time could really be the last straw with casual track fans. Of course, considering most people only watch 10 seconds of it every 4 years it is kind of hard for us to watch the sport any less than we already do.

-As I talked about when the tournament was going on a couple months ago, there is a clear hierarchy when it comes to the four golf majors and the PGA Championship clearly comes in at a distance fourth. It is nothing personal against the tournament, it just doesn't have that one thing which draws people in like the other majors. The Masters has Augusta National, the US Open has its reputation as the toughest test in golf and the British has history on its side. Plus, they haven't exactly been helped by a string of one-and-done champions who have all blended together over time. That is why in the last couple of years the organizers have been trying to spice the PGA up. Last month there was a discussion about going back to the match-play format the tournament had in the 1950s, but that was quickly shot down as someone mentioned the probability of getting two players casual golf fans had never heard of playing in the final group, which would make rating even worse than they normally are. This week another idea was floated, which was that the PGA Championship could be contested overseas at some point. The proponents of the idea think this would set it apart from the US Open and the Masters, plus it would acknowledge that the game is becoming more International. I guess I can see their point as this would set the PGA apart from the rest and suddenly give the Championship more respect among the players on other tours. However, if their goal is to make the PGA more popular with American golf fans, this is a terrible idea. The first rule of marketing is that if you are trying to build the reputation of your product the last thing you want to do is make it difficult for people to find it. People such as myself will set our alarms extra early to get up and watch the British taking place 6 hours ahead of my time zone because it has history and is played on courses we have all heard of. But if you are playing the PGA Championship in Asia in the middle of the night on a course which was built in 2006 then I'm just going to read the recap whenever I get around to it. I understand what the organizers of the PGA want to accomplish, I just think they need to remember who they are before their eyes get too big for their stomachs. Besides, it is not like they are in that bad of a position. They may be widely considered the fourth major but I'd rather be the fourth most popular major than everyone's favorite regular season stop.

-I've never been much of a gambler. The problem is I get psyched out before I even start when I assume everyone at the table is much better at the games than I am. That is why on the rare occasion when I do place bets, I like to place them on sports. I know every game is essentially a 50/50 proposition but I like to think the odds are slightly more in my favor given all the sports I watch. I especially like the long-term bets of how a team will do that season because I feel like you get the most gambling bang for your buck as you can ride it out for an entire year, plus it isn't as risky because while a team can have an off game they rarely have off seasons. However, even I am not sure I would have the patience of a Welsh grandfather named Peter Edwards, who placed a £50 bet when his grandson was 18 months old that the boy would eventually play soccer for Wales. At 2500/1 odds, he cashed in and won £125,000 when his 16 year-old grandson Harry Wilson made his debut against Belgium in a World Cup qualifier (the fact that he could even get odds on something like that to begin with should serve as a reminder that you can bet on just about anything in the United Kingdom). Edwards says he plans to retire off the money. On the surface this is a cute little story about a grandfather's faith in his grandson but I am actually concerned this could set a dangerous precedent. I don't think any parent ever starts out intending to be one of those people you see standing on the sidelines of a child soccer game screaming at the refs, it just sort of happens along the way. Having never been in this situation myself I can only assume it is some combination of the emotion of the game and the parental instinct to protect your child that causes people to go slightly crazy. Plus, in today's economy it is possible that more people than ever are banking on their kid getting an athletic scholarship to be able to afford college, which only puts more pressure on the situation. If you heap even more pressure on that kid by having a hundred thousand dollars hanging on their success it could be more than most kids could take. The drop out rate of kids in sports is high enough as it is. Also, who has an idea of a kid's athletic potential when they are 18 months old? Most kids haven't learned how to use the toilet by that age. Unless Wilson's father or grandfather was some kind of soccer star who knew the kid would be handed great genes it seems more like a crazy idea which just happened to work out than a solid plan for parents going forward. I just know this - if I ever see bookies taking odds on my niece's tee-ball game (where every one gets an at-bat and no one keeps score) I know we will have gone over the edge. Unless, of course, I get really good odds, in which case I could be brought around to see the light.