Free agency season is upon us in the NFL. It’s the time of year when men with absurdly large bank accounts open up their wallets to sign players with not-quite-as-absurdly large bank accounts. And with that routine, we get the whining from people who call the players “overpaid.” Overpaid? Compared to what?
In case you hadn’t noticed, football is a business. Fans buy tickets (or they watch on TV, which creates a huge advertising market, which creates huge TV contracts). The owners take the money from the tickets and the TV deals, and they pay the players. (Yes, it’s slightly more complicated than that, but you get the picture.) The end result is that people (say, Calvin Johnson) can sign contracts for $132 million. (Of course, keep in mind that the numbers you always hear are really just splotches of ink on paper; NFL contracts aren’t guaranteed and Johnson could very well be cut sometime before his contract expires. Pay attention to the guaranteed number; in Johnson’s case, $60 million. Still pretty good, right.)
To the 99% of us, that sounds like an exorbitant amount of money. And it is. But does he deserve it? Of course he does. The simplest argument is that someone is paying him that money; therefore, he deserves it. His owner and general manager are perfectly happy to pay him that money (well, I’m sure they’d have liked to have given him less, but Calvin Johnson wasn’t holding a gun to their heads and demanding $132 million). Continue reading ‘complaining about overpaid athletes’
I’m a big sports fan. And that includes college sports. I think most American sports fans could list a number of things they love about college sports: the NCAA Tournament’s Cinderella stories, the marching bands at football games, the fierce rivalries, and countless others. But if we look at the big-time college sports, football and men’s basketball, there can be no doubt that these sports are big business. Millions of dollars are at stake based on the performance of young men, most of whom are 18-22 years old. And the rules say that these men cannot be paid (except for tuition, a dorm room, etc.). The problem is, the two preceding sentences are at odds with each other. The most talented of these men are undoubtedly worth millions of dollars–they often turn pro and then receive gigantic salaries. And yet they cannot officially be paid. Obviously that is going to lead to a situation where many of them receive money (or other compensation) through unofficial channels, some shadier than others. Maybe it’s an easy job, maybe it’s an occasional lunch, maybe it’s a few $20s or $100s. Maybe, if you play at Miami, it’s a prostitute. The point is that it’s absurd to think that these sorts of things aren’t going to happen just because the NCAA doesn’t want them to.
But this isn’t a diatribe against sleazy boosters or rule-bending coaches or corrupt governing bodies. This is about the absurdity of the very notion of amateurism and its roots in the snootiness of 19th century England. The lazy landed gentry with their public school educations (in England, “public school” means “school where the really rich people go”) were playing cricket or various forms of football and didn’t want to compete against the working-class rabble. The people who had actual jobs couldn’t afford to take the time off work needed to compete at the highest level, so sports were, at first, exclusively for “amateurs” (i.e. the elites). In some cases, not only was getting paid to play outlawed, but in the case of rowing, anyone who was a “mechanic, artisan, or labourer” was not allowed to compete. Heaven forbid the factory workers with their big muscles should compete against the upper class. However, in the late 19th century sports such as soccer and rugby started to attract spectators (i.e. money). This led to a desire for better players, and in 1885 soccer’s governing body in England, the Football Association, officially allowed professionalism. Rugby didn’t handle things so well, leading to the 1895 split that still exists today: rugby league (which allowed professionalism) and rugby union (which, shockingly, didn’t officially become professional until 1995). Continue reading ‘the concept of amateurism and its role in American college sports’
Now, let’s get one thing straight right of the bat. Jonathan Bornstein is an amazingly talented soccer player. In a nation of 310 million, he’s one of the best 30 or 40 players. And he’s probably a perfectly nice guy and decent human being.
But he still sucks. He’s a left back, but he can’t defend, which is a pretty important skill to have if you’re a left back. He was terrible in the World Cup last year, and he was terrible today against Mexico in the Gold Cup. I realize we’re thin at left back, but is that really the best we can do? When Steve Cherundolo went down with an injury, not only did we have to bring Bornstein on, we had to switch Lichaj over to the right. Lichaj has looked pretty good on the left, but he didn’t seem comfortable on the left. So we got worse at two positions. In a perfect world we’d have had Timmy Chandler come on at right back, but he wasn’t called up, presumably because we wanted to keep his German club team happy, as he would’ve had no offseason had he played in the Gold Cup. (Some thought that it might have to do with him wanting to play for Germany, but that’s not happening, according to interviews with him and his agent.)
Again, I realize our lack of depth and experience along the back, but couldn’t we have brought on Spector? Or Ream, even if it meant shuffling some players around, which we did anyway? As soon as Bornstein came on, it’s like the entire Internet said, “Oh, shit!” (Well, the American parts of it, anyway. The Mexican parts we’re saying, “Hell yes! Look at this crappy half-Mexican defender the gringos just brought on!”) Everybody knows he sucks, except for Bob Bradley. Sometimes Bradley gets attached to players and those guys pan out. (Exhibit A: coach’s son Michael Bradley, who is an absolute beast in the midfield.) Other times, it just doesn’t—for example, Ricardo Clark get inexplicable minutes in WC 2010. It’s the same thing with Bornstein. He just sucks, and needs to be booted from the national team.
If you follow sports you’ve probably heard that the NFL owners and players are arguing with each other. Each side wants a bigger share of the billions of dollars in revenue the league generates. The owners want more money; the players want more information about the teams’ finances; and to put it in clichéd terms, it’s billionaires fighting millionaires. Do they really think it’s a good idea to complain about their share of a gigantic financial pie when unemployment has been above 9% for the past two years? Apparently, they do. Now, people aren’t going to care too much if the season starts on schedule. If this debacle is out of the way by July, no big deal. But if this gets close to the start of the season, if it affects any games or comes very close to doing so, the NFL is playing with fire.
Right now the league dominates the American sports scene. I admit I’m a little bit biased, living in the football-mad South and Saints-crazed New Orleans, but the NFL is clearly the biggest of the Big Four North American sports leagues. The league is doing incredibly well on TV, and even in the recent economic downturn the vast majority of NFL teams routinely sell out their stadia for every game. It would be incredibly stupid for the teams and players to risk a nightmare along the lines of the 1994-95 MLB strike. That ruined baseball for years; it only made a decent comeback after the long-ball era and home run chases of the late 90s and early 2000s, an era that we now know was tainted by steroid use. I’m sure the teams and players of MLB must have cost themselves a ton of money due to the game’s decreased popularity. Why should the NFL take that risk? It’s in a great position right now. That doesn’t mean it’ll automatically always be the biggest league in the US, but a strike could certainly have damaging short and long term effects. What if a league such as the UFL makes a push for expansion and increased popularity during a lockout or strike, then tries to stick around? What if people decide they’d rather just watch college football, knowing that teams can’t threaten to relocate and there are no strikes or lockouts? Continue reading ‘the nfl labor dispute’
What’s the quickest way to piss off a million people? Claiming that Dallas is a better place to live than New Orleans. Sean Payton just found this out the hard way when he announced that he was moving his family to the Vaquero Club, an ultra-exclusive, ultra-expensive golf course community in Westlake, a suburb of Dallas. Reportedly, the house once belonged to Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira, who used to play for the Texas Rangers. And as you might expect for a guy who supposedly makes about $8 million a year, it’s a really, really nice house.
As time has passed, more information has come out about how this situation is going to work. First, there were reports of a door-to-door 90-minute commute by private plane, which sounded a bit unlikely. Instead, according to an article in today’s Times-Picayune, Payton will live full-time in the New Orleans area during the season, with his family flying in for Saints home games; he also expects to move from Mandeville somewhere closer to Saints headquarters in Metairie.
Most rational Saints fans and New Orleanians acknowledge and understand Payton’s desire to do what he feels is best for his family. But just about everyone in the area, on at least some level, is emotionally appalled at Payton’s decision. You live in Dallas for a couple years, then you live here for five years, become more-or-less deified after winning a Super Bowl, then you decide Dallas is a nicer place to raise a family than here? New Orleans has had a long rivalry/inferiority complex with regards to Dallas and Houston and Atlanta. Everybody holds those cities up as crown jewels of the South, with their downtown corporate headquarter skyscrapers and their vast, sprawling suburbs filled with cookie-cutter houses and strictly regulated signage in commercial areas. But we in New Orleans steadfastly reject those supposed paragons of commerce and industry and wealth. We think it’s a good idea to take a mid-winter Tuesday off work, make enormous papier-mâché tractor-towed floats, throw silly trinkets from said floats, fight over said trinkets, and drink alcohol and eat king cake while doing these things. Clearly our way of life is different. Continue reading ‘that sean payton is moving his family to dallas’
America is counting down to a Super Bowl that will involve two of the NFL’s most storied franchises: the Steelers and the Packers. Both have trophy cases lined with league championships. Both can point to many Hall of Fame players who have suited up for them. Both have had a tremendous amount of fan support. But there’s one very big difference. The Steelers are owned (and essentially have been since their inception) by the Rooney family. The Packers? They’re owned by 112,158 people. They are the only major American sports franchise owned in such a manner. And it’s not like the shareholders are looking to get rich: the club is a non-profit entity, and if it is ever sold, the proceeds would have to go to local charities. Thanks to this structure, the team can’t hold the city hostage and threaten to move if they don’t get a fancy new stadium.
In case you don’t already realize how awesome this concept is, let’s go back to basics. What is the point of a business? To make money. What is the point of a sports team? To win. What is the point of a business that is a sports team? To make money and to win. But what happens when those two goals collide? Which one of them gets pushed by the wayside? Sure, some owners spend money lavishly, running their teams more to stroke their ego than to make money. Others are miserly, clinging to their investment and looking for every last penny.* The two goals—profit and winning—can come into conflict, and a team’s success is often determined by which of the two the owner would rather seek. Continue reading ‘that we don’t have more community-owned sports teams’
After a shaky 4-3 start, the Saints are on a roll. They now have a 10-3 record, second-best in the NFC. And yet, if the playoffs started today, they’d be a #5 seed and would head on the road to take on the 6-7 St. Louis Rams. You know, that team the Saints just crushed. This is a result of the NFL’s obnoxiously tiny divisions and their insistence upon seeding division champions above higher ranked wild card teams.
Now, some of you may say that this is sour grapes, as my team is the one currently being affected. Well, of course I’m bitter. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Numerous times over the past few seasons teams with better records have missed the playoffs for the sake of champions of crappy divisions, or teams with better records have gone on the road to play a division champ with a worse record. In 2009, Green Bay finished 11-5 but had to go to Arizona to play the 10-6 Cardinals, losing 51-45 in overtime. In 2008, the 11-5 Patriots missed the playoffs (finishing tied with Miami for 1st in the AFC East but losing on tiebreakers) while the 8-8 Chargers won the AFC West and locked up the #4 seed. Continue reading ‘the nfl’s playoff seeding’
As those of you who are college football fans probably heard, TCU just decided to join the Big East. Maybe you’re wondering what a school in Fort Worth is doing in a conference comprised mostly of East Coast schools (with a few Midwestern ones thrown in). Well, the answer is pretty simple: they want a better shot at a BCS bowl, especially the national championship game. Despite a 12-0 season, the Horned Frogs are on the outside looking in and will have to hope that either Auburn or Oregon lose this weekend. With a move to the Big East, by far the weakest of the AQ conferences, TCU pretty much guarantees itself a BCS berth any year it wins the conference, something that was not the case in the Mountain West. Oddly enough, though, had they decided to stick around the Mountain West may have been able to finagle an AQ spot—a conference with both Boise State and TCU may have had the clout to get a permanent berth. But strictly from a football perspective, you can’t blame TCU for jumping on a sure thing. And the Big East makes a smart move: they pick up a good team to quash any chance of getting demoted from AQ status. It’s a win-win football move.
But should football be the one thing that determines everything in intercollegiate athletics? This move is great in football, but a complete disaster by any other standard. For basketball and the non-revenue sports, you’re shipping TCU’s athletes on trips of 1,000 miles or more. Just in case you actually thought the NCAA and the schools were concerned about the “student-athletes,” moves like this would surely dissuade you from that notion. For football, the travel argument doesn’t matter all that much. Fly out on Friday, miss class that day (if you can’t set up your schedule otherwise), and do that five or six times a year. No big deal. Football is one of the few sports where the travel demands on athletes aren’t unreasonable (although conferences whoring themselves out to ESPN for Tuesday or Wednesday night games is kind of ridiculous). But why on earth should we be sending soccer or volleyball or softball teams halfway across the country? It makes a mockery of the theory that these athletes are supposed to be students first. As a college sports fan, I’ll admit I’m part of the problem. I’ve got a Tuesday night basketball game on the TV as I type this. Fans watch, ESPN pays, conferences do anything for a buck. Continue reading ‘tcu’s move to the big east’
A lot of dumb stuff happens during football games, even at the NFL level. I’ve chronicled quite a few dumb things here on my blog. But today’s blunder from Sean Payton will surely rank up there as one of the dumbest things I’ve ever witnessed during an NFL game.
The Saints were down 20-10 and had just kicked off to the Browns; twelve minutes remained in the 4th quarter. The Saints had a chance to force a three and out. Colt McCoy dumped off a third down pass to one of his receivers; Darren Sharper dove to make a play at the ball but missed. It seemed, however, that Sharper had touched the receiver, making him down by contact; but the receiver scrambled off for a 12-yard-gain and the first down. Sharper protested to the refs, but to no avail; however, Sean Payton and his staff saw what happened and got ready to challenge. But wait—there’s a flag on the opposite side of the field, well away from the play. From where it’s thrown, it could only seem to be defensive holding or something similar. Sure enough, Malcolm Jenkins had been whistled for illegal hands to the face, a five yard penalty that is also an automatic first down.
At that point, Sharper’s tackle became completely irrelevant. Sure, he actually did make the tackle, but an upheld challenge by the Saints would only lead to the Browns’ acceptance of the penalty. And it’s not as if there were tons of yards at stake; the difference would be 1st and 10 at the 36 or 1st and 10 at the 29. Obviously if the receiver had run for a touchdown a challenge would be the proper call; and obviously, had there been no penalty, a challenge would have been the smart thing to do. Continue reading ‘sean payton’s dumb fourth quarter challenge’
I could say that things haven’t been going too well for the Saints this year. But that’s only relative to the success of last’s year 13-0 start and Super Bowl title. Relative to most of the Saints’ history, a 4-3 start is pretty damn good. But it’s also incredibly disappointing. Sure, the Saints’ offense hasn’t been anywhere near good as it’s been since the arrival of Sean Payton and Drew Brees. But the defense has been excellent; they haven’t scored the TDs or forced the turnovers that they did last year, but teams are having a very tough time scoring on the Saints. The Saints are 4th in total defense (measured in yards/game), an impressive stat. And the offense isn’t all that bad; they’re 7th in yards per game. Let’s look at the Saints’ three losses: a missed field goal in overtime against the Falcons; two pick-sixes against the Cardinals, and two more today against the Browns. Against Arizona and Cleveland, the Saints played excellent defense, keeping those teams’ rookie quarterbacks in check without too much trouble. But in both cases the turnovers killed the Saints. And the responsibility for those turnovers, while undoubtedly shared by players and coaches alike, ultimately rests with one man: the guy throwing them. Drew Brees is turning around to see the other team returning his passes for TDs almost as often as Jarrett Lee did for LSU in 2008. (Brees has thrown four so far this season; Lee had seven that year.)
I realize QBs are going to have bad games. It happens. Teams are obviously doing a much better job of adjusting to the Saints’ attack than they did last year. What bothers me about Drew Brees is the way he talked during the post-game press conference. (Transcript available here.)
Consider this quote:
“Any time you give up two defensive touchdowns, where you turn the ball over and that results immediately in a touchdown, you don’t even give your defense a chance to get out on the field and defend. When it happens once, you probably have about a 20% chance of winning after that. If it happens twice, you might as well throw it out the door. We have now had, in those two losses, four touchdowns scored against us where the offense turns the ball over and the defense scores. What is so frustrating is in both of those games if you take those touchdowns away, the defensive touchdowns, we score more points than they do.” Continue reading ‘drew brees not owning up to his mistakes’