The Sporting Life category archive

Warning: Language.

Via LQ.

Bob Molinaro, in the local rag:

Evidence and his harshest detractors scream that Joe Paterno abused his power. But who gave him his power? Fans, administrators, media. Us. Anybody who went along with the idea that a football team and its coach could be bigger than the university. People are talking about what to do with Paterno’s statue. It couldn’t be a more trivial debate. Shouldn’t any thinking person understand that things are out of whack when schools start building statues of coaches?

I don’t have much use for professional basketball or hockey on television. (Frankly, these days, I don’t have much use for any pro sport that doesn’t involve bats and diamonds).

A generation ago, when I lived in the Washington area, back in the days of Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld, I attended some Bullets (now the Wizards) and Capitals games at Cap Centre and quite enjoyed seeing them live, but the games just move too fast to fit in a box.

Part of the pleasure of watching the Bullets was that they were a team, not a superstar with an entourage of lackeys on the court.

Nevertheless, I rather enjoyed seeing the Le Bron James haters get their comeuppance–not because I’m a big fan of James, but because the hatin’ was getting tiresome after Lo! these many years.

Now comes Sam Sommers to point out that, not only was the hatin’ getting tiresome, but it was also based on a simple, simplistic, simple-minded interpretation of events:

However, take a more careful look at the past few seasons of LeBron. On paper, at least, he has actually done a lot of the things we claim we want our sports heroes to do. He left salary on the table when he departed Cleveland for Miami, placing a greater emphasis on winning over money. In pursuit of a championship, he was willing to join a team that already had an alpha dog superstar in Dwyane Wade. And that whole criticism about passing up shots at the end of games—don’t we want our stars to check their ego for the good of the team?

But as sports fans, as in so many other walks of like, we gravitate toward the simple narrative in thinking about other people. Most sports fans wanted LeBron to stay in Ohio and try to bring his hometown team a championship. He made a different choice, and when he did so in notoriously poor and artless form, his die as villain was cast.

Daniel Ruth considers the Masters Golf Tournament’s continuing sojourn in the 19th century. A nugget:

Augusta National is much more than a private country club for swells. It is a vast corporate enterprise that rakes in gazillions of dollars a year in sponsorships, television rights, ticket sales, merchandising its logo around the world, licensing video games and other assorted marketing and promotional campaigns.

The club is, for all practical purposes, the IBM of brassies. Augusta is the equivalent of someone who pours out their most intimate details on Facebook and then complains about not having any privacy.

(snip)

Why wouldn’t one of the assembled reporters ask a couple of essential questions: “Yo, Billy Bob. Isn’t this whole thing regarding Virginia Rometty simply, supremely stupid? Don’t you feel just a bit dopey in being held up as a classic example of lug-headed sexism in America? Really now, is the world going to end merely by admitting an accomplished woman to your hallowed halls?”

And maybe this: “General Bullmoose, do you really want one of the great golf tournaments in sports to be overshadowed by the club’s persistence in treating women like lower-caste scullery maids?”

Leonard Pitts, Jr., takes a look at the Tim Tebow fuss. After contrasting Tebow’s actions with what passes for normal amongst football players (grandstanding, hot-dogging, leg-breaking, and the like), he considers some of the reasons why Tebow’s actions have attracted so much attention.

He concludes that the reaction to Tim Tebow’s actions must be viewed within the context of those who debase faith (and the faithful) by using it (and them) to earthly ends:

To the degree faith is seen as synonymous with the aforementioned Christian right, it becomes a thing to be brayed by conservative extremists for political gain. It becomes a crowd gathering on courthouse steps to bemoan the removal of a rock bearing the Ten Commandments, becomes a school board trying to use the Book of Genesis in high school science classes, becomes a justification to abuse Muslims and gays. It becomes license for regrettable behavior.

Moreover, it becomes a whirl of God talk and God iconography, a cross as fashion statement, a WWJD bracelet, a football player kneeling on the field.

But that is faith externalized for public consumption, faith that runs the risk of being shiny and superficial. It doesn’t speak to the decisions we make, the people we are, when despair comes creeping into the midnight hour. Nor does it speak to any obligation toward the scabrous, the lost, the unwashed, the impoverished, the disgusted, the detested, the detestable. Indeed, those whose faith is most loudly externalized are often the ones most silent on that obligation.

A desirable outcome.

Also, a football field is not a theatre stage. Bring back marching bands.

Also also, Madonna is now officially a has-been.

The local rag opens a story with this agonizing description of pain and despair.

He envisioned sitting at a table in the school’s gym or library with media, coaches, teammates, family and friends waiting for him to announce where he would play.

But despite a history-making senior season, Mayes will sit out today’s ceremonies. He’ll instead spend the day working out.

Mayes fell short academically, failing to meet the NCAA’s minimum GPA or SAT score.

It’s about a kid whose grades aren’t good enough to play semi-pro college football having to sit out “Signing Day,” when high school kids (high school kids, mind you) learn which semi-pro college team is going to notpay them for playing football next year. (Wonder whether spending school days working out had anything to do with his grad–oh, never mind.)

The only persons with an IQ above 20 who care about “signing day” are at brewery ad agencies and ESPN.

Furrfu.

Football uber alles:

No one seemed to embody the conflict – and a stunningly persistent sense of denial – than Erickson, the genteel white haired former provost at center stage. Erickson, signed on to guide Penn State through 2014, repeatedly said his goal was “the guiding principle of openness and communication” – but those communications last night ignored the overwhelming failures of Penn State’s leaders in the Sandusky case.

“It grieves me very much when I hear people say that thus is the Penn State scandal,” Erickson told one questioner last night. “This is the Sandusky scandal. This is not Penn State.”

Except perhaps for the small thing of that ten-year long cover-up.

I understand that next year there will be a new college football betting pool in Lost Wages, Nevada.

The Cess Pool.

I made the mistake of turning on an NFL football game (I lasted three minutes–three real minutes, not three football minutes).

It was half-time.

One of the retired jocks on the “fight literacy–keep retired jocks on the air” panel of experts informed me, amazement in his voice, that a player

caught the ball with his hands!

I guess he left his net on the bench.

Furrfu.

I used to look forward to New Year’s Day. I would immerse myself in bowl games.

This year, the only college football games I have watched have been those that have gone over their scheduled times and delayed the shows I wanted to see.

I am not alone in my disgust. At sfgate dot com, Dave Zirin explains why he has lost patience with college football. A nugget:

This year I was broken by just how disgusting the institution of college football has become. It started with the scandals at Ohio State and the University of Miami. Both showcased just exactly how hypocritical the system is, as athletes are pilloried in the public square for violating NCAA rules that deny them even modest compensation. But those problems seem positively quaint after the happenings at Penn State and the way the economic, social and cultural imperatives of big-time college football were put ahead of the safety and welfare of small children.

(snip)

The money has metastasized dramatically, and as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Money often costs too much.” Athletic departments have now become a moral dead zone.

In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Charles Clotfelter wonders who is responsible for the corruption in college sports and nominates a culprit. The nugget:

As tempting as it is to blame greedy commercial influences in the marketplace, the real culprits in this persistent failure to reform have been, and remain, the universities themselves.

For universities with big-time sports programs, sports have always been a core function, right up there with research and teaching. For reasons uniquely American, college football and basketball not only enjoy widespread popularity, they take on tremendous importance for trustees, alumni and other university stakeholders. These leaders want successful teams, in part because they believe that athletic success will bolster their institutions’ academic mission, but mostly because they value athletic success for its own sake.

If you wonder why NCAA “reforms” and “self-policing” continually fail, try rephrasing the question.

The question is actually why the window dressing keeps falling off.

Dan Gillick offers a new method for handicapping college football bowl games.

Meanwhile, Joe Nocera examines the hypocrisy of the NCAA. A snippet:

Twice a year in Vienna, the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries gather to decide on the short-term direction of oil prices. Sometimes, O.P.E.C. agrees to cut back on oil production, pushing up the price of oil. Other times, it decides to boost production. Always, the goal is to fix the price of oil, rather than allow it to be set by the competitive marketplace. Indeed, collusion and price-fixing are the main reasons cartels exist — and why they are illegal in America.

Yet, in Indianapolis a few weeks from now, a home-grown cartel will hold its annual meeting, where it, too, will be working to collude and fix prices. This cartel is the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The N.C.A.A. would have you believe that it is the great protector of amateur athletics, preventing college athletes from being tainted by the river of money pouring over college sports.

In fact, the N.C.A.A.’s real role is to oversee the collusion of university athletic departments, whose goal is to maximize revenue and suppress the wages of its captive labor force, a k a the players.

I have gotten so disgusted that I’ve watched only a piece of one football game,* semi-pro college or professional, and that was a Broncos game, to see what all the fuss was about Tim Tebow’s antics. I saw no antics.

Read more »

Jerry Sandusky’s insurance company cuts and runs:

The insurance company for Jerry Sandusky’s charity, Second Mile Inc., wants to be excused from paying for his legal defense, a bill that could easily reach six figures if all criminal charges and litigation against him goes to trial.

(snip)

While the insurance policy does provide for legal costs, the company’s filing in U.S. District Court in Williamsport maintains that paying for such costs “arising from sexual assault, molestation” or abuse is “repugnant to Pennsylvania public policy” and so should be barred.

I do not consider it an overreaction to speculate that this indicates the accountants think he’s toast.

The local rag has a long story about the pederasty shenanigans at Penn State.

Buried in it is this gem.

Under NCAA regulations, the overall ethical conduct of a college sports program is paramount. Administrations at all NCAA-member programs must exert “institutional control,” meaning they must strictly adhere to the rules and have an appropriate level of oversight in place to detect and investigate violations.

From the NCAA spelling book:

“Ethical culture. T-V-r-e-v-e-n-u-e. Ethical culture.”

Katha Pollitt comments in the Nation. A snippet:

Back to Penn State. Next to the molesting and the inaction, was anything more disturbing than the student riot in defense of it? If those thousands of kids had been Occupiers, don’t tell me they could have overturned a news van and knocked down lampposts with relative impunity. But sports is different. Impunity is its middle name—for players, coaches and apparently fans as well.

Today, the two major local universities, Norfolk State and Old Dominion, play each other in football for the first time. There is much buzz about it, with many pointing out Old Dominion has had a football team for only three years.

(It’s a playoff game; regular season games were already slated to begin in two years.)

I don’t follow either team closely, though I know persons who have attended both schools, but the coverage has been hard to escape.

One thing I haven’t heard mentioned is that, even had ODU had a football team for the duration of its existence, this still might be the two schools’ first meeting, for historically Norfolk State was an all-black Jim Crow college (“separate but equal” and all that) and ODU began as an extension campus of an all-white college up the road a piece.

How refreshing to open the sports section not see headlines about pederasty.

Instead, there are only heartwarming stories of stabbings and twittering twits.

. . . . . . . .

Oh, wait.