The Sporting Life category archive

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.

A while ago, I expressed my skepticism about the wisdom of turning to gambling as a way to raise funds. Today’s local rag has a long story that feeds my skepticism. A nugget (emphasis added):

Aragona-Pembroke makes more money from bingo and pull-tab gambling cards than any other Little League in the country, bringing in about $800,000 per year after paying out winnings, according to its most recent tax returns.

But the windfall hasn’t trickled down to the players, a Virginian-Pilot investigation shows.

In 2012, Aragona-Pembroke spent $150,000 on baseball operations, including uniforms, field maintenance and umpire salaries. That is about the same amount shown in the league’s 2009 tax filing, one year before it bought Witchduck Hall (a bingo hall–ed.).

What has changed are the league’s expenses.

More than $500,000 of the bingo hall revenue winds up in private hands, according to tax returns, property records, sales contracts and a deed of trust filed with the city.

The league paid $251,000 in salaries in 2012, including a combined $136,000 to Lou and Cheryl Mazza. Lou Mazza is apparently the only Little League president in the country receiving a salary, according to a review of Internal Revenue Service returns and the national Little League office. The national organization’s rules prohibit league officers from receiving money for their baseball service. Such an arrangement would inspire a “thorough, lengthy internal review,” national Little League spokesman Brian McClintock said in an email.

I have driven past that little bingo parlor many times and wondered what was going on in there.

I rest my case.

Addendum, a Few Days Later:

Shake up.

The longtime president of the Aragona-Pembroke Little League and his wife are out as officers, but the league won’t say whether they resigned voluntarily or whether they will continue running the league’s gambling hall.

They were involved in the organization for two decades. I suspect that, after a while, they begin to think of it as their own, rather than of thinking of themselves as its stewards.

Bob Molinaro, writing in my local rag, sums up the scam:

Bottom line

While NFL teams shared $6 billion in revenue last season, most of it coming through the league’s TV rights, you can be sure that the next time an owner wants a new stadium, he’ll expect taxpayers to pay the freight.

Was it bait-and-switch or simple incompetence at the old hole-in-one contest?

Daniel Ruth scores a goal.