The Sporting Life category archive

Daniel Ruth notes that two Florida legislators want to pass a law declaring that playing “Fantasy Football” for money is somehow not gambling. Not Coincidentally . . . .

And now we know the going rate for Rep. Matt Gaetz-R, Shocked, Shocked, and Sen. Joe Negron, R-Three Card Monte, is $10,000 each. That’s the amount of the legalized bribes the political committees operated by these two Florida Legislature pit bosses collected from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

And what did the association get for their $20,000 ante? Under bills sponsored by Gaetz and Negron, the fantasy sports sites would be formally regarded as games of skill and not gambling. That would counter a 1991 legal opinion — and a rather accurate opinion at that — written by Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth that prohibited the fantasy leagues from collecting money and disbursing winnings.

Read the rest.

Get the full story at The Charlotte Observer.

Football, the All-American game:

Want to sing the national anthem at a Temple University home football game? The gig’s for sale.

Temple requires a group or soloist to sell a certain number of tickets to the game in order to perform.

Next on the bill: Unionville High School’s chorale. About 50 members of the Kennett Square group will belt out “Oh, say, can you see” at the Nov. 21 game against Memphis at Lincoln Financial Field.

Price tag? 100 tickets at $15 a pop.

If you pay enough, you get to high-five the team in the tunnel. Follow the link for a list of prices.

According to the story, Temple is not alone in this practice. After all, what’s more All-American than making everything all about money all the time.

The NFL is run by some of the worst people in the world.

Non Sequitur is the only contender as successor to The Far Side.

Crooked gambling. Who knew?

I counted up the number of college football games on our local TV and cable stations yesterday: 35. There were three baseball games being aired.

I watched a mystery.

Hank Garfield is correct. Television’s–and sports fans–football fetish is absurd. Here’s a bit of his screed:

I get it – football is more popular (than baseball–ed.). I’m not sure why. A football game contains about 12 minutes of action to about 25 for a typical baseball game. Football fans have no standing to complain about baseball’s slowness. Neither game is really about action, anyway. Football is about violence, and baseball is about story. If I want action, I’ll watch hockey.

A judge sees through the NCAA’s farcical facade of being about “athletic” endeavor (emphasis added).

In a monumental ruling today (yesterday–ed.), the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the NCAA’s rules prohibiting student-athletes from being paid for the use of their names, images, and likenesses constituted an unlawful restraint of trade in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

(snip)

The 9th Circuit heard the case after the NCAA appealed an unfavorable ruling following a bench trial with Judge Claudia Wilken. Judge Wilken had concluded that the NCAA’s compensation rules were an unlawful restraint of trade and that the NCAA was essentially a cartel with an oft-changing definition of amateurism. She then enjoined (or prevented) the NCAA from prohibiting schools from increasing scholarships to cover the full cost of attendance. Of course, the fact that scholarships were not covering the full cost of attendance in the first place was ridiculous.

Follow the link for a lengthy discussion of the ruling.

Dollars to doughnuts the NCAA fights this one to the end, because, if this ruling stands, it means the end of all that lovely free money earned on the backs of their student serfs.

Another example of why I am so done with big-time football.

The parents are blaming to the local high school officials, but the NCAA, which has raised arbitrary impenetrability, nitpicking, and selective enforcement to a fine art, is ultimately responsible.

John McEnroe, aspiring Bobby Riggs (warning: language):

I remember watching Bobby Riggs’s matches against Margaret Court and Billy Jean King on the telly vision.

Win or lose, Riggs was a jerk, a fitting idol for John McEnroe.

Afterthought:

My second childhood includes a Mustang convertible. It does not include making a fool of myself in public. I can make a fool of myself right here quite nicely thank you.

Also, subscribe to TWIB. You might learn stuff.

Bob Molinaro, sportswriter extraordinaire:

The NFL Network reported Tuesday that Eli Manning was seeking a new contract to make him the NFL’s highest-paid player. By Wednesday, Manning was saying the story was a fabrication. But, of course, Eli – who eschews social media – was missing the point. For at least a day, the apparently phony report served as grist for the talk shows and Twitteratti, which is all that really seems to matter anymore, especially in the dog days of August.

Bob Molinaro marvels at the academic brilliance in big-time NCAA football:

It’s only to be expected that when Notre Dame junior tailback Greg Bryant was ruled academically ineligible that some in the media would reflexively deem it to be a “scandal.” In what sort of warped world does disciplining an athlete for failing to live up to his classroom responsibilities constitute a scandal? The actual and time-honored academic scandal in college sports, we all know, is how few big-time athletes – certainly no star players – are lost due to poor grades or cheating. It’s amazing how that works.