The Sporting Life category archive

Bob Molinaro on milking it for all it’s worth:

The merchandising of Derek Jeter’s long farewell tour by the Yankees, Nike, Gatorade and others amounts to a tribute industry unmatched in sports history. And the selling isn’t about to stop. Not when there are still so many more emotions to be manipulated for corporate gain.

Jon Stewart takes on the NFL Redskins team name.

Below the fold in case it autoplays.

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Bob Molinaro.

Bob Molinaro isn’t buying the NFL’s dance on condoning violence off, as well as on, the field.

The excuses some NFL people have used to explain why it took so long to suspend players for domestic violence incidents generally fall under the heading of “the climate has changed.” I never realized there were so many meteorologists running NFL teams. But no one who respects the difference between right and wrong waits to see which way the wind is blowing before doing the decent thing.

The fuss about Roger Goodell–what did he know and when did he know it?–is a red herring. The problen isn’t Goodell; it’s not even the NFL. Covering up the misdeeds of star players reaches as far down as high school.

Big-time football is hopelessly corrupt.

Bob Molinaro, sports writer extraordinaire, explains discipline in big-time football:

It’s easier to distinguish the lines walked by NFL teams that cravenly attempt to discipline their players for off-field misconduct. Rarely does the punishment fit the crime; it’s adjusted according to the player’s value.

Follow the link for the rest.

So much for “playing for the fun of the game.”

Back when I was in Little League (I wasn’t very good, but I still enjoy baseball), the worst aspect of the game was the parents. The parents of one team, sponsored by a local fraternal organization, became notorious as the “Moose Mothers.”

Girls (and boys) may just want to have fun, but the parents seemed determined to poison the game.

If you wonder why big-time football and other sports are hopelessly corrupt, just look at their “fans.”

Cranky Bear argues that it’s time that, because of its brutality and corruption, football follows boxing into obscurity.

Here’s a snippet that echoes some of what I’ve been saying in these electrons.

Speaking of Goodell and the NFL, football is run by the biggest pack of shysters and liars that you’ll ever see. The NFL denied the facts on concussion when they knew they were true, it held back on punishing Ray Rice for spousal abuse, and has fought to stiff players whose bodies were broken in the service of amassing wealth for the owners and their cronies in the league office. The case of Ray Rice demonstrates a disturbing tendency by the powers in college and professional football to protect the perpetrators of violence and sexual assault.

The NCAA, which manages college football, is even worse than the NFL. They still peddle the stinking lie that big-time football players are “student athletes” who shouldn’t be paid, all while rolling in the dough that they generate. Have you ever seen the type of colored blazer wearing philistine who regularly occupies positions on bowl committees, events that rake in dollars made by the unpaid workers on the field that the people are paying money to see? These well-fed respectable men about town act as if those young athletes owe them a living. College football is nothing more than a giant wage-theft racket dressed in the romantic garb of “tradition.”

Persons who follow sports are starting to predict that Roger Goodell’s remaining days as the Commissioner of the NFL are short.

The Booman turns thumbs done to a suggestion Condoleezza Rice should replace Roger Goodell as Commissioner of the NFL. I don’t think he has a case.

After all, what difference could it make?

Big-time football is already irredeemably corrupt.

Please just make big-time football go away.

Check out the new “Missionary” formation.

It’s all the rage(rs) all the time.

Heh.

Two golfers accused of fighting over the rules had assault charges dismissed after they refused to testify against one another.

State police say 63-year-old Roger Lee Harris and 42-year-old Bryan Bandes were playing with three others at the Springdale Golf Course near Uniontown in Fayette County on Aug. 3. That’s when they began arguing about rules involving “casual water” — or puddles — after it rained.

Bob Molinaro comments on recent developments in the politics of big-time college sports. A nugget:

Kansas State’s stadium recently was renovated for $90 million, with $65 million more in upgrades yet to come. But that’s chump change compared with the $370 million that has been approved for stadium improvements at Oklahoma.

As (Big 12 commissioner Bob–ed.) Bowlsby might say – with great pride, no doubt – this is the face of college football most fans recognize.

“Our professors – I have an office I could swim in,” (KSU football coach Bill–ed.) Snyder said. “They’re in a cubbyhole somewhere, yet they go out and teach and promote education every day, and I value that.”Football no longer has any bearing on the quality of the person, the quality of students.”

I am fed up with sports because this can be considered newsworthy by a major newspaper:

Only two arrests Saturday at inaugural Levi’s Stadium game

Bob Molinaro cuts to the quick:

More blather: More potentially confounding was Bowlsby’s assertion that paying college athletes wouldn’t work because “there’s only so much money out there. I don’t think that coaches and athletic directors are likely to take pay cuts.” It doesn’t take a cynic to interpret his words to mean that one of the primary purposes of NCAA sports is to make and keep coaches and ADs rich. Just so we understand how the game is played.

More quick cuts at the link. (His Saturday columns always delight.)

If you don’t think that “Redskins” is a slur, consider the reaction if Dan Snyder decided to rename his team the “Washington Whiteskins.”

H/T Susan for the thought.