Weekly Sporties

-I know it seems like baseball season just ended a couple weeks ago, but the reality is that we are only about a month away from pitchers and catchers reporting for Spring Training. Now, what is notable about the upcoming baseball season is that it will be the last for Commissioner Bud Selig, who has announced he will retire after the 2014 World Series. But before he does that there is a rumor going around that he wants to go on a League-wide retirement tour, stopping at every stadium along the way to say good-bye to the fans. I'm not sure there are enough words in the English language to explain how bad of an idea this is. I'm assuming the Commissioner was inspired by the farewell tour that Yankee closer Mariano Rivera went on in which he was showered by applause and gifts. If that is what Selig is expecting to get on his retirement tour he is in for a rude awakening. The big difference is that while Rivera may have occasionally been a thorn in the side of opponents, he was never seen as the baseball's biggest problem - a title which has been bestowed on Selig at various times during his tenure. Since Selig took over in 1992 (admittedly he did not want the job and was only supposed to be an interim commissioner) the game has seen it's popularity steadily decrease and lose younger fans to sports which move at a faster pace due to its refusal to embrace technological advances like replay, a problem which lands directly at Selig's feet. Also, he turned a blind eye to a fairly obvious steroid problem, instead being content to use the massive homerun numbers to bring fans back after losing many casual fans when the season was cancelled in 1994 (that may not have been his fault, but it happened on his watch) and is now hypocritically trying to clean up the game by going after steroid users by using tactics which are themselves rather shady. Now, this is not to say Selig is a bad guy or that he was a failure. I mean, expanding the playoffs has worked out well and it is not like the sport sank to niche level. Still, I don't think Selig is as popular as he thinks he is and I simply don't see any reason to burst his bubble now. Plus, someone should pull him aside and remind him that even popular commissioners get booed in public. It is one of the unwritten rules of sports - any authority figure from the League Office must be booed simply for showing up. Those boos are only going to get louder when fans think it is their last chance to voice their displeasure at someone so I would advise Bud to stay home and have a party there. Trust me, the teams will still send gifts.

-It is slightly ironic that in Selig's final season the one thing I have been most critical about - his reluctance to expand replay - is about to be taken care of. The other day the League approved expanded replay on just about everything short of balls and strikes. While the expanded use of replay is a good idea, I am still not sure they picked the right system for how to implement it. Going forward each manager will be given one challenge for the first six innings. If they win that challenge they will get a second challenge. This will apply to the first six innings and anything from the seventh inning on will have to be taken care of by the umpires. This is clearly lifted from the NFL's version of replay challenges but the main problem is that I have never thought the NFL's system was all that great. You see, it works off the very flawed premise that a referee will only get one call wrong per half and if you have been watching baseball lately it is pretty obvious that baseball umpires are capable of having very bad days. Teams shouldn't be penalized for that. I guess you could argue that this adds another layer of strategy to the game because now managers will have to decide whether or not they want to challenge something which happens early in the game but that fails to address the very simple issue that they shouldn't have to make that kind of call. The reason you have replay is to make sure that every call is right and whether or not a manager already challenged two questionable calls in the first 4 innings of a game shouldn't come into play. That is why I would much rather seem them adopt a system a little closer to the college football one, which is that everything is reviewed by an independent set of eyes and if they see anything worth taking a further look at they buzz down to the crew working the game. It takes the issue totally out of the hands of the managers and the umpires and makes sure that every call is correct even if the manager is out of challengers. Now, opponents of that plan would point out that if a manager didn't like a call and wanted replay to take a look at it a second time they would simply order their guy to take his time between pitches, thus slowing the game down even more. There is some validity to that but anyone who watched the World Series could see that even a guy taking extra long to adjust his equipment before entering the batter's box would still be faster than a manager coming out to argue an obvious blown call, the umpires gathering to fix that obviously blown call and then the other team's manager coming out to argue the fact they reversed that obvious blown call. Besides, do you know what is worse than a 4-hour baseball game? A 4-hour baseball game in which your team got screwed.

-Because baseball's season now stretches into November and bleeds directly into football season there is only so much a sport fan can watch at one time, which means the NBA gets squeezed out until after the Super Bowl. Most years that isn't the worst thing in the world because there are entirely too many NBA regular season games to begin with and there is no need to burn yourself out on an early season tilt between the Bobcats and the Bucks. I will at least give credit to the NBA for having caught on to this fact and back-loading the schedule so that most interesting games which only happen once or twice a year don't happen until after football has gone into its offseason. However, this year the NBA's willingness to take a backseat is really too bad because it means casual fans are missing out on what has been an historic run by Oklahoma City Thunder superstar Kevin Durant. Durant has been unstoppable this season and has a long string on games in which he has scored at least 30 points. His great play has catapulted the Thunder near the top of the Western Conference standings and has put Durant in prime position to win his first MVP. The thing is that not everyone is as impressed with his play as of late, specifically LeBron James who this week made an offhanded comment about how jealous he is that Durant gets to take so many shots in the course of a game. James says he was just trying to be complimentary but you'd have to be an idiot not to see that he has an ulterior motive, which is to accuse Durant of being a ball-hog without actually saying the words. I don't think James has any particular grudge against Durant (they are teammates on Team USA and no reports of them hating each other have emerged) but at the same time James is in no great hurry to see Durant run away with what he considers to be his MVP trophy. You see, if James were to win the MVP this season it would make him the first player to win four MVPs in six seasons and this smear campaign makes it pretty clear that is an honor he wants. It is not like James is crazy to think he deserves consideration - by some standards it is the best all-around season he has ever compiled - but it is just not as good as what Durant is doing, especially when you remember the Thunder are missing their second best player. But, more than coming off as petty James is also quite wrong in that Durant takes exactly three more shots than him per game, which is almost nothing. If he wants to make a case for why he should remain MVP over Durant he is going to have to do better than that. But, if he really is jealous of one guy being tasked with carrying an entire franchise on his back and doing it all himself, LeBron could always go back to Cleveland.

-When the NFL announced that they had reached a $765 million settlement with a group of about 4,500 former NFL players who alleged the league knew about concussions and their lingering effects my first reaction was that it was a bargain at any price. The NFL wants concussions out of the news and they would have paid any amount to make it happen, which is why the figure actually seemed low to me. Sure, they had some leverage in that the people suing need money for medical bills and they need it now but I still thought the amount would have been higher. Turns out I am not the only one who may think that as this week a judge has put a freeze on the settlement. Now, the judge's halt is based on concerns that the NFL will not be able to make all the payments as necessary (which is absurd because they make $9 billion annually) but there are rumblings that with the extra time and a further look at the books some of the parties who settled may want to back out and re-open the suit because they didn't get enough money the first time around. Considering the cost of medical bills and basic inflation, $170,000 per person seems a little low, especially when you remember that is just an average and some of the players won't even be getting that much (it's based on when they played and how their medical history has been since retiring). I'm sure the specter of having this back in the news would be worth another couple hundred million to the NFL, especially with the Super Bowl coming up which is why I say they should go for it. Here's the thing: I am not one of these people who thinks the NFL is evil - just dickish. They run a sport which is based on violence which would be fine because it is played by willing participants but at the same time they can not act like they had no idea this was going on and pretend they give a crap about player safety when they clearly do not. One of the fundamental tenets of polite society is that we won't remain mad at you for trying to get away with something provided that when you fail at that attempt you act like you are sorry and don't try it again. Even though the number was lower than I thought it should be that is essentially what the NFL was doing with this settlement which by itself was fine but then they had to start acting like they were being generous. That is was too much for me which is why I would like to see that number go up a few million. Every now and again the NFL needs to be poked and reminded that they are not above reproach and the best way to do this is to hit them in the wallet. Sadly I don't think that will happen because there are too many players who need the money too badly to go through more litigation so the NFL will get away with it this time. Still, there are new players retiring every year and many of those guy are going to need medical attention down the line so I hope the NFL keeps their lawyers on speed dial because one of these years they are going to have a group who isn't quite as desperate for money. I guess then we'll finally get to know what the going rate of silence really is.

-This weekend the AFC and NFC Championship games will be taking place. Now, this has been one of the most unpredictable NFL seasons in recent memory which is why it is rather ironic that we still ended up with the two match-ups most experts predicted, New England versus Denver and San Francisco at Seattle. Now, most of the time the NFL is forced to hype up these games and act as if the two teams are traditional rivalries when the reality is that they have only played each other once or twice in recent years but in this case the games feature two teams which could actually be considered rivals of one another. This is especially true in the game between the Seahawks and the 49ers because not only do these teams share a division they really do not like one another. It starts with their head coaches,who have been sniping at each other since Pete Carroll was at USC and Jim Harbaugh was at Stanford. It only got worse as the two teams started playing better the last two seasons and then stockpiled enough talent in the offseason to make them the odds-on favorites to make it to the Super Bow. Add in two contentious games during the regular season and you've got a recipe for actual animosity. For the most part this rivalry has stayed between the teams but now the Seahawks are taking things to the next level and trying to stick it to 49er fans as they are putting a ban on people from California buying tickets to this weekend's game. You see, Seattle prides itself on having one of the loudest stadiums in all of sports and tries to make it as loud as possible when the opposing team has the ball. I guess they figure an entire section of 49er fans would cut into that noise. Personally I have two issues with this policy. The first is that it seems rather short-sighted and underestimates how popular your own franchise could be. How do they know that there aren't any Seattle fans in California? Both states are big in the tech industry so a person could very easily have lived in both places. But the other reason I don't like this policy is because it seems rather bush league. I happen to believe crowd noise is over-rated as a factor anyway. (Think about all the times you really concentrated on something. Do you remember hearing anything? Of course you don't because that is the first thing your mind shuts out.) But even if it weren't trying to keep opposing fans out of you stadium makes you seem petty and thin-skinned, as if the very idea that someone in your stadium would not root for your team is too much for them to handle. The Seahawks aren't the first team to pull this kind of stunt but usually it is done by teams who are afraid another team is going to take over 90% of their stadium. Unless the entire idea of the 12th Man in a myth, that seems like something the Seahawks shouldn't have to worry about anymore.

-Last week I told you that San Diego Chargers offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt was the leading candidate for all four open head coaching jobs in the NFL and until he picked which team he wanted to coach there would be no movement on any of those jobs. Well, after the Chargers lost to the Broncos Whisenhunt wasted no time in deciding to take the job with the Tennessee Titans. (Not the one I would have picked, by the way. I would have gone with Minnesota. Detroit has the most talent but I feel like Minnesota is the more stable organization.) Anyway, once Whisenhunt was off the market two of the three remaining teams quickly filled their voids with Mike Zimmer going to the Vikings and Jim Caldwell taking over the Lions. That just leaves the Cleveland Browns without a coach and while it is not the worst thing in the world to be the only team in need of a new coach it is probably not a good sign that to this point the team doesn't even have a favorite lined up. Normally by this time you would hear something about a leading candidate but according to various reports the Browns are still trying to lock down interviews with a few of the coordinators who are still coaching in the playoffs. This can't be a good sign. (Browns owner Jim Haslem is calling for fans to be patient. It is rather ironic that the guy who fired a head coach after just one season is now calling on people to stay the course and trust that he has a plan in place.) I find myself wondering if the fact the team is having such a hard time lining up interviews has something to do with the quick hook they gave to Rob Chudzinski. Reportedly a few of the coaches the Browns had called about potential interviews also gave Chudzinski a call to ask him what working for the organization was like and you would have to imagine he did not give Cleveland a glowing recommendation. I don't care how specialized a job coaching in the NFL may be, it is still like every other job in the world in that a short stint with a company is going to raise a lot of questions, so it is not inconceivable that some coaches would view the Browns job as a risk not worth taking as it could do them more harm than good down the road. Now, it is not like the team will never hire a coach - it is one of only 32 NFL jobs and it pays extremely well so eventually they will find someone to take the reins. I just can't imagine a high-profile coaching taking over this team now and, frankly, after this long of a wait that would be the only thing which will satisfy the Browns fans who are anxiously awaiting a new coach. Considering the team has only had two winning seasons since they came back to Cleveland I would say they have waited long enough.

-Of course, if the Browns would like to hire a coach this afternoon they could hire Saints defensive coordinator Rob Ryan, who would undoubtedly take the job. If you compared resumes to some of the coaches who the Browns are allegedly waiting to talk to it wouldn't even be that much of a stretch as he has a solid reputation as a coach who gets the most out of his players and comes from a family of coaches who have achieved at least some level of success in the NFL. Hell, he even has ties to Cleveland, serving as defensive coordinator under Eric Mangini. (Ok, maybe no one in Cleveland needs to be reminded of the Eric Mangini regime.) The point is, if you needed to hire a coach and brought Rob Ryan in for an interview it would not be the most far-fetched notion in the world. However, Rob Ryan has yet to get so much as an interview for a head coaching position and this week it was speculated on ESPN that it has less to do with his coaching credentials and more to do with his appearance. You see, Rob Ryan is a big guy with a lot of long hair and this apparently impacts his ability to coach a football team. I know that sounds like a stupid reason not to hire a guy who could help you win but, sadly, when it comes to the professional coaching ranks many people think that is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why a coach can't even be brought in for an interview. If you don't believe me, just ask yourself why coaches like Rex Ryan and Charlie Weis got gastric bypass surgery shortly before they got their head coaching jobs. Apparently you can't be fat and a good football coach. Now, there is something to be said for the argument that coaching at the professional level requires a coach to look professional. However, that argument can easily be shot down by pointing out that football coaches are allowed to wander the sidelines dressed like hobos. How professional does Bill Belichick look in his cut-off sweatshirt? What about Jim Harbaugh in his $8 Wal-Mart khakis? Also, I think Andy Reid is just as big a guy as Rob Ryan but for some reason he hasn't been held back from getting a couple of head coaching opportunities. That means it has to be the long hair, which is idiotic. The simple fact is that it doesn't matter what your coach looks like as long as they will win your football games and the fact NFL owners use this as a reason to overlook a guy for a head coaching job is another reason I am amazed they made enough money to buy a team in the first place. The good new for Rob Ryan is that the Raiders are bound to need a new coach any month now and his long hair would fit right in over there.